Attack of the Killer Garbage Cans

It’s garbage night. The wheelie bins are lined up along both sides of a quiet street.  Green lids, yellow lids, all carefully placed upon the curb, no over-filling allowed.

The temperature drops and the fog sets in around 5am. House lights are switched off and there is a quiet stillness. Residents and pets are asleep in their safely contained houses with the knowledge that their rubbish packed into its plastic vaults is ready to be removed and forgotten forever.

In the stillness there is a murmuring. The slight sound of squeaking plastic against concrete, the squelch of rolling over wet grass.

Mr Glass leaves his house as Ms Patton arrives home from night shift. They stop in their tracks at the sight before their eyes. Sixty wheelie bins lined up in a battalion in the middle of the road.

The bins roll forward. Glass and Patton run for their lives to their respective safe havens. The bins are snapping like hungry sharks, contents spewing out like molten lava.

Surrounded by green plastic, there are no witnesses. Garbage is replaced with body parts.

The garbage truck turns into the street, the contents are compacted and the truck drives away.

Techies at the Bottom of the World

This is a story that begins with the world of techies and also ends there. If you don’t know what a techie is then I’ll explain it to you. Basically it is a highly skilled, highly intelligent being that is considered to be a blue collar worker. Paid minimum wage, expected to work under pressure, duress, diva-ism and exhorbitently long hours, for little reward or recognition. This is the career I have chosen. Sigh!

OK, so that might seem like a bitch session, but it’s not. I chose this career because it makes me happy – not rich, famous, invited to the right parties, cool or revered amongst my colleagues. Just happy.

Upon embarking upon a recent techie debrief (this often occurs amongst a select few of us same creatures after a long hard days work), I discovered that we had an advantage in the human evolution process. We may well be the last living humans who still smoke, drink to excess, and party like there’s no tomorrow, but we have an advantage!

Recently I applied for a job which, within the position description stated that the job entailed walking around 2km per day, lifting heavy things and working in underground, dark and varying noise and temperature levels. I obviously thought ‘that’s the job for me’. I don’t know about you, but my life introduction was walking for many hours and kms in the wee hours of the morning in search of alcohol, a cab, or my house/car. I think carrying a weeks worth of groceries for a 5 bedroom house home from coles whilst having a dog on a lead classifies as lifting heavy things, and the amount of nightclubs I’ve been to until the sun wakes up qualifies me for the latter part of that selection criteria.

When I got past the ‘nightclubbing’ stage of my life I decided that instead of ‘growing up’ and ‘getting over it’ that I would just find a career which involved the exact same things except that I got paid for it (instead of wondering where my wallet was the next day and wondering why I was being evicted for not paying the rent on time). Hence the life of a techie!

I came into techie-dom late in life comparably. These days young people come out of high school and when asked by the school career counsellor what they want to do they respond with things like ‘rock star’, ‘master chef’, ‘top model’, ‘web designer’, ‘film producer’, ‘interior decorator’. In my day we went ‘oh, I don’t know, let me go to uni for a while and figure it out. I might want to take a year off and travel the world so I can see how other people live and get some life skills and learn how to look after myself’. Well actually, we weren’t that philosophical about it. We really just said ‘we want to go and get stoned, drunk and party our little heads off cos we’ve just been made to endure 12 years of public schooling and now we need to find out who we are’. There was no ambition for home ownership or babies! Hence we went out in pyjamas and op-shop clothing, took drugs, read Neitzsche and Beckett, and believed we were Marxists! It’s always good to guage public reaction.

There’s a book – ‘The Descent’ by Jeff Long which is about a race of beings that live in a subterranean world below us. It was later adapted into a film which I can’t remember the name of. It’s basic premise is that satan and devils live below us, but for me, says so much more. This writing is about humans who live ‘below the radar’. They exist and function without the knowledge of the ‘higher’ human race. They are essentially the same species but have evolved in a very different way and prefer to go unnoticed and live in the dark underground where they can exist in their world without the constraints of ‘civilised’ beings.

This is where techies come in.

I live in a world where it is best if I’m unnoticed (and I actually prefer it that way). The ‘civilised’ humans go about their business having ideas, dreams, wear suits, and develop money-making ventures. They buy houses, build empires, fuck with the economy and the environment and die of heart attacks (but have enough medical insurance to bring them back from the dead).

Us techies are content with the day to day, minute by minute strategic and logistical planning of how we are going to eat, survive, and primarily, have fun. This planning is what supports the civilised humans in their endeavours because without us, their ventures would be unrealised. Therefore it is advantageous for them to keep us alive. Hmmm….. any correlation with slavery? Darwinism?

OK, so back to the original premise.

It will end with the techies!

Why?

Because we are used to darkness, uncontrollable situations, exhaustion, starvation, exposure to toxic chemicals, hard manual labour, over-indulgence, sleep deprivation, resourcefulness and opportunism. We also have access to the deepest darkest facilities on our planet (all of which are stocked with basic rations and technical equipment). They usually also have bathroom and napping facilities! So at the end of the world, we will know where to go, be safe and essentially be quite comfortable in our surroundings.

So bring it on civilised humans!

Lists!

I’ve always liked lists. Even when I was at high school I would get home and write a list of all the homework I had to do, then tick it off as I completed each task – nerd!

When I was younger, I wrote lists but never referred back to them, as once I had written them down, they were implanted in my short term memory. It’s a bit like setting the alarm and then waking up 1 minute before it goes off (which I also do). Once I’ve registered a thing in my head, it seems to stay there and is locked into a reminder system (a bit like gmail calendar alerts). This system is managed by a small team of Elves who live in my brain and have the joyous and unrewarding task of endeavouring to file in a quickly and easily accessible fashion, the multitude of useless facts and important information that I place in there.

These days my short term memory is not quite what it used to be (the Elves are getting old). So I now have an iPhone to take some of the pressure off them. I predominantly use the phone for the things like where I need to be for work and what time, so that they can concentrate on the bulk of the library – like the fact that Alpha Centauri is the closest star to earth and is 4.3 light years away, Mark Antony’s speech from Julius Caesar, or the words to Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

I write lists at home too. Shopping lists, home renovation lists, what I want for Xmas lists, and lists of chores to be done around the house. With the latter, I tend to start with the ‘actual’ things that need to be done in the house – like empty the dishwasher, hang out the washing, vacuum the floor, etc. Then I read back over the list to prioritise the tasks. These lists make me bored and tired. I usually need a couple of hours in front of the TV to re-inspire me.

Then, once re-inspired, I begin tasks which are not on the list. When I’ve completed each one, I go back to the list, write it at the bottom and immediately tick it off. This gives me a sense of satisfaction and achievement. At the end of the day, many of the original tasks remain unticked, but I have usually now completed double the amount of ‘other’ tasks which have all been ticked off, and to all intents and purposes it looks as though I’ve been extremely productive.

The other good thing about lists is that when someone at work asks whether you have done ……… you can genuinely say ‘no, not yet, but it’s on my list’. You usually have to do it eventually (like write that report or send that email), but it can delay the actual ‘having to do it’ phase by a significant period of time. This allows the freedom to complete the ‘important’ tasks (like watching YouTube, playing solitaire, sending silly emails to your friends or writing blogs). You know, I’m pretty sure that the public service was built on this model of procrastination!

An ode to Lists:

The list is there to tell us

Just what we should have done

But once written down on paper

You cant help but think of fun

But it makes us feel much better

When we give it a good try

So let’s celebrate the list my friends

And keep that pad nearby

Dog Years & The Good Life!

I recently had to ‘put my dog down’. He was 21 years old (apparently 147 dog years). I’d had him for 16 years (112 dog years). His name was Dodge and he was a Pommy-Wa-Wa (Pomeranian-Chihuahua cross).

Everyone said ‘he’s had a good long life’.

When I was 21, my mother died. She was my age now – 47. Everyone said ‘she was too young to die’. I think she had a pretty good life???

Now, it strikes me as strange that we are all expected to live to a minimum age before we’ve had ‘a good life’. How does having a good life equate to it being time to die? Should we only die once we’ve had a good life? And who the hell decided that dog years were 7 times human years? Trees live for up to 1000 years (well that’s if you remember to water them). Does that mean that 15 years for us is one year for a tree? Isn’t a year 365 days (except for leap years)? Isn’t a year based on the lunar and solar orbits of the planet? Is this not a finite thing (except that humans slightly miscalculated it….)?

Personally, I think a ‘good life’ is what you make of the time you’re alive on this planet. I think I’m having a good life. My tail’s still wagging, I look forward to dinner time, love lying on the couch watching TV, and I’m 332.5 dog years old!

D

Clouds

I want to talk about clouds!

I have recently watched Cloudstreet, I work from a Dropbox which apparently lives in ‘The Cloud’, and it’s so cold in Melbourne because we have no Cloud cover to keep the heat in. Who thought that clouds could be that important? I remember as a child learning about clouds – cirrus, cumulus and stratus. I was fascinated by them and began keeping a diary of which clouds were ‘out’ each day. Yes, I was a strange child. I also memorised the distances of stars from earth! I wanted to be an astronaut. Well, that was one of many career options I chose in my teenage years, along with archaeologist, geologist, astronomer, ufologist, physicist, biochemist, psychologist, naturopath, and advertising executive! Now I find myself at the age of 47 having worked in the arts as a lighting technician for the last 20 odd years and I’m still thinking about clouds! Maybe I should have picked meteorology as one of those career choices?

So, anyway, clouds. Clouds are formed by the condensation of water molecules in the atmosphere. They cool down, heat up, condense, transform from solids, liquids, gas and back again. They can move around (or fly) through the air at varying speeds, create rain, contain heat. They are like superheroes of the sky.

Maybe I would like to be a cloud???? Sometimes my brain feels like a cloud – full of fluffy white ice crystals which ‘cloud’ my judgement. Sometimes there is a dark cloud which hangs over my head. Occasionally I experience a cloud of inspiration – a bit like a thought bubble.

Did you know that there is a cloud appreciation society? (The Cloud Appreciation Society is a society founded by Gavin Pretor-Pinney from the United Kingdom in January 2005. The society aims to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds, and has over 22,000 members worldwide from 83 different countries – Wikipedia). Maybe I should join that? Or maybe that would encourage a cloud of madness to form over my head?

Now, apparently all my work – business files, invoices, photos, music – all live in the cloud. I’m not entirely sure which cloud they live in, but they’re hanging out up there somewhere. I have an address, but it doesnt seem to show up on Google Maps to find out exactly where that location is. Some clouds are real and others are virtual. Not sure which type mine is. It seems that clouds are so important that Apple has recently brought out the iCloud!

Clouds influence our world both personally (like when you look outside and decide what you are wearing based on what the clouds are looking like) and environmentally (let’s not tangent off into the global warming debate…). The thing is that they have influence and power but we cannot touch or interact directly with them. They are like gods or superheroes – do not question them, believe in what they tell you, and always respect them.

Maybe clouds are gearing up to take over the world! Forget the insects, aliens, vampires and robots! Clouds can be way more challenging in a fight to save the world. Just try and stab a cloud in the heart with a wooden stake or spray mortein on them or disconnect their battery pack. Hmmm…. so how do you kill a cloud? Maybe they are truly immortal and indestructible. A force not to be reckoned with. I could start a conspiracy theory at this point, but I might leave it here for now. Just remember ‘clouds are watching you!’

D

Bathroom Renovations 2!

Ha!

Sorry about the – ‘no update on Friday’

Basically there was nothing really to update!

I researched flooring options and purchased ‘floor leveller’ and began concreting the floor. Seems that, contrary to the 5kg container saying it will cover up to 3 square metres, it only really covered 1 square metre. So now I have a third of the floor concreted (it does look good and smooth though!), and have to buy 2 more tubs of the expensive stuff!).

Concrete with FI the Concrete Munchkin!

That is really all that’s happened! The bathroom is still non-functional, there is no basin, and we had to use the ensuite and the laundry for the Eurovision Party!

When I actually have something to report, I will post it!

Asparagus Wee!

This has always fascinated me!

Check out this website if you’re interested in some background info

http://ilovebacteria.com/asparagus.htm