29 September 2006 at 18:49
The fun in Piddledorf just goes on and on. By never having any kids of my own, I thought I could avoid ever dealing with childish petulance and narcissism, but for now I'm stuck with two senile rellies who unfortunately still have all their critical faculties, plus the usual German high-level OCD, overlaid with Retention Deficit Disorder.
I try to approach the whole situation as a Buddhist challenge. The only way to get along with these people is to suspend all your desires. Expect nothing from life, except food, water and sleep. So far I am practising the advice of my UnHeard Of guide, never (or rarely) reacting to all the little attempts at provocation.
Thanks to the good people at Somaloft™ I have the octuple-strength bliss pills to help me with this, and I have discovered huge reserves of patience. I'm so blissed on SSRIs that I drift happily through the stultifying boredom, the screaming by the deaf people, the awful kraut TV with the volume turned to 11. Without the pills I would have had to meditate day and night, just to avoid slaughtering the lot of them. I have only another 10 days of this before I can escape back to my secure little bunker in Berlin.
You though I was a nice person, but I'm probably as bad as the rest of them. Basically, I'm realising that these people, my family, are just not very nice people.
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28 September 2006 at 11:56
There's no room to explain right now, but my family is surely the most dysfunctional on the planet.
There was a family meeting yesterday, where my aunt read her will and some people (not me) cried, and I tried to stay awake. She's as healthy as a horse, but basically the deal is that my brother and I will inherit a few tuppeny houses with sitting tenants, which nobody wants to buy. My luggage is 15 kilograms underweight, so I'm going to try and smuggle out some of the silver and crystal in my suitcase next week.
But I'm going to be rich anyway. You see, there's an old family secret, handed down through generations of gardeners, for a plant food formula that will double the size of your houseplants, almost overnight.
I've got some investors interested, so just as soon as I fix the bugs in this blog template (especial apologies to Firefox users), we can start production. I'm thinking of using the brand name "Beanstalk Gold".
And because the raw materials for the product cost absolutely nothing, all the money is profit. As long as I can flood the market before the conglomerates like Monsanto get wind of it, I'll be rolling in it.
In the photo, the black line shows you the difference between the normal size of the plant before treatment, and all the vibrant new foliage that appeared after one week's treatment with Beanstalk Gold™.
I'll share the secret formula with you, if you promise not to pass it on. Just click the image.
The formula has been tested outdoors too, and the people who live here have been enjoying the results from our vegetable garden.
I'd like to acknowledge my late uncle, who passed on the formula to me before he passed on himself.
PS - I'm not serious about going into business, but everything else is true. This is a freelance Taoist blog. So I try to make sure that every true story contains a wee lie. And every lie contains a grain of truth.
PPS - sorry won't be able to get to a PC on Thursday, so I'll need to catch up on my blogchums a few days later.
If you missed previous HNTs, you can access all the old half baked thursday posts here.~
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25 September 2006 at 23:34
Settling in now to the auntie's house in Piddledorf. She has started me on the beer-fat-and-cake based weight gain diet. My stomach thinks it's Christmas, and I'm well on the way to becoming a fat Scots bastard like some visitors to this blog. What a fortunate man! I even managed a tall glass of Erdinger weissbier yesterday, the essence of happiness.
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21 September 2006 at 11:28
Multiple choice question. This a picture of:
(1) my Berlin Mardi Gras hat.
(2) proof that jetlag is flattering.
(3) a Berlin church that was bombed in the war and never rebuilt.
If you missed previous HNTs, you can access all the old half baked thursday posts here.~
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20 September 2006 at 17:48
It was a treat to log on here on the other side of the world and pick up my dear blogchums' comments. Life is definitely looking up, with no effort required from me. As a wise woman once counseled me to say to myself: "the universe is unfolding as it should". Mind you, the same person used to say "there are no
'shoulds' in the universe." I think she was setting me what the zen buddhists call a koan, a puzzle to be contemplated.
Wednesday morning here in an old Berlin apartment, in an area a bit like Glasgow's West End or Edinburgh's Stockbridge. I'm staying with Karin and her husband. I have known Karin since last century when we were both students, in Germany and Edinburgh. She and Christian are the most un-German Germans I have ever known, and it's lovely to be welcomed into their home for a few days before the main campaign.
Last night, 9 time-zones' worth of jet lag kept me awake most of the night, checking out the Berlin radio stations and bed-dancing. I also read Saul Bellow's first novel Dangling Man. Thank goodness it was a short book, his writing was starting to cancel out my bliss-medication. Martin Amis was a buddy of his, so I had thought it might be enjoyable.
I've got an internet PC in my bedroom, so there's only one reason I need to go out today - to take a Berlin HNT picture.
But first there's time to visit my chums' blogs. What a fortunate creature I am, even if the krautkeyboardis a nightmare and Blogger's all in German.
PS - The unique and ubiquitous
lee ann has kindly agreed to become a co-editor of this blog, and will retrieve any half-worthwhile drafts in the event that the assassins get to me here. So my message will live on, whatever it is.
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19 September 2006 at 06:07
Found a free internet PC in Vienna airport, to check some blogchum blogs. 2 flights gone, one to go.
Thanbks to my recurring NPD, I decided to post my itinerary, in case the next plane plummets:
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AIR DALY WATERS - DW 1
SUN 17SEP MCDONALD ISLAND INTERNATIONAL - SYDNEY AT 1450 1610
AUSTRIAN - OS 2
MON 18SEP SYDNEY NS VIENNA AT 1650 0610
DURATION 21:20
SYDNEY NS -KUALA LUMPUR
KUALA LUMPUR -VIENNA
EQUIPMENT: BOEING 777-200/200ER
SEAT 01G NO SMOKING CONFIRMED
AUSTRIAN - OS 271
TUE 19SEP VIENNA AT BERLIN TEGEL DE 0730 0850
VIENNA INTL TEGEL
NON STOP DURATION 1:20
NON SMOKING
FLIGHT OPERATED BY VO TYROLEAN AIRWAYS
EQUIPMENT:FOKKER 100
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As you can see, I cashed in my British Airways ticket at the last minute, and rebooked with a different airline, in an attempt to avoid the jinx. My neighbour said to me last week "if your number's up, there's nothing you can do about it." Yet he's a cop, and makes a living out of preventing people's number coming up.
If anyone wants to make some money from the National Enquirer or the News Of The World, by showing them the recent posts that prove that I was given a prophecy by the clairvoyant, it's all yours. Sell to the highest bidder.
Later:
Bad news for fortune hunters - I have just survived the third flight too. What was I so worried about? I'm glad it's over. Now I can start worrying about the return flights next month.
I'm now at my old bunker in Berlin, which has been turned into das easyinternetcafe.com, a sort of electronic Starbucks franchise.
The flights were just amazing! As you might expect by now, there were upsides and downsides, keeping everything balanced overall.
Downside: Weeks of post-viral malaise blew out into depression.
Upside: The partner gave me a lovely card at the airport,
Downside: when I opened the card in the plane I nearly wept.
Upside: one effect of traversing so many time zones is that you hit one mealtime after another. Between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, I ate 5 full meals (two of them were 5 courses).
Downside: the cabin crew kept waking me with more food and drink.
Upside: I won´t need to eat again today. I can blow the food money on internet.
But the best upside of all was this - because I`m in this country at the invitation of some former high-ranking staff, I travelled business class and billed it all to them. And you should see the long-haul business class seats. The`re full of electric motors, and infinitely adjustable right down to a full-length bed! When they've finished feeding you the five courses plus chocolate and liqueurs, then you press the button to convert to a bed, and they come and tuck you up under a blanket. Even the womb was never this good. There`s even a button that makes the bed start massaging you. Of course it could never be as good as a real massage (e.g. one of keda's astral projection rub-downs), but it sure beats sitting bolt upright for 23 hours in the sewage class cabin.
If I was rich enough, I'd just travel the world on an infinite round-the-world business class fare. Rich people aren't any better than the rest of us, but I noticed one difference:
Normally, when you're in an economy-class toilet on a long trip, people rattle the handle and bang on the door, even though the wee sign states quite clearly "Occupied". They're suffering from Retention Defecit Disorder. Sometimes a proletarian with a poor toilet-training history even tries to kick the door down while you're in there.
Business class people never do that. They hold their bladders and wait patiently. Deferred gratification is what separates the middle class from the animals.
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17 September 2006 at 08:41
A couple of posts ago, I
observed that whenever two people in a disaster movie say "I love you" to each other, one of them will be killed.
The very next day, I farewelled my boss before going on leave, and she said "I love you." Not only was I embarrassed, I knew that if I completed the verbal transaction (what George Costanza calls the "I-love-you-return") , one of us was dead, probably the one going on all the planes tomorrow. So I walked off, pretending I hadn't heard her.
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16 September 2006 at 06:24
As Southern Hemisphere agent for the books of
John McKenzie, I have my finger on the pulse of the book-buying market here in the UnHeard Of Islands. For a long time I had been pleading with him to rip off Irvine Welsh or J. K. Rowling, two top-selling Edinburgh authors. Or if he couldn't do that, I wanted him to write something more postmodern and self-referential.
Well, now he's combined all three of my suggestions in his new book. It's a sort of Billy Bunter in Edinburgh, with the author chatting knowingly over the reader's shoulder. Brilliant ploy! This book can't fail. Even the gratuitous Buddhist jargon in the story is a selling point nowadays (look at all the made-up words the poor reader is forced to wade through in Lord Of The Rings and Harry Potter).
I am proud to have been involved in the inspiration and planning of this book, and I ask for no reward except the usual 10% off the top.
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14 September 2006 at 07:46
BACKGROUND: According to
USA Today, Germany is home to about 900 members of Hezbollah.
Germany's refusal to take part in the U.S.-led war in Iraq used to reassure Germans that Islamic terrorists would focus elsewhere. "We didn't fight in Iraq, and until now we assumed that if we behaved well in the world, nothing would happen to us," said one woman. Until now, Hezbollah has ordered its people not to engage in terrorist attacks in Germany, according to a public report by the intelligence agency for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
But the two train bombers arrested in Germany recently were Lebanese. A Middle East expert and government policy consultant said, "Germany did not call for an immediate cease-fire (during Israeli attacks) in Lebanon, and that was disappointing in the Arab world. Some radical forces now think Germany should be punished."
Decades ago, a friend persuaded me to have my palm read by a clairvoyant. At the time, I treated the whole thing as a laugh, a bit like a visit to the circus. So I can only remember three things that the clairvoyant said:
- I would get very sick around age 33, but I would recover. True!
- I wouldn't be rich, but I would never run out of money. True!
- I would die suddenly, at the age I am now.
Well, 2 out of 3 isn't too bad. The last one can't be true, because here I am, alive and well and about to go on holiday to the fatherland. By plane. Six planes, actually. British Airways. Through London Heathrow. In Germany, I'll be travelling by train. What could possibly go wrong? Can anyone read palms?
For security reasons, I have shrunk my handprint to hide most of the details. I know somebody who would just love to stick a thumb tack in my lifeline.
Last Christmas someone gave me Robert Fisk's ironically-titled
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. It's a huge book, so I have just been staring at it since Christmas, wondering when I'll have time to read it. Recently I thought I'd try and read it before I'm obliterated. That way, at least I might better understand why.
In the last 2 months I have read the first 100 pages. That leaves just 1300 more pages to read in the next 4 days, before I fly to London. I don't think I'm going to make it.
Perhaps I should give up on the book, and go to the movies instead. What's showing just now?
United 93. That should help take my mind off things.
Have you noticed how some bloggers are gradually losing the will to blog? I can't blame them.
The world wide mess makes it hard sometimes to see the point of anything. Things have even got so bad that I've decided to double my medication. That should help. Even if I have to stay on it for the rest of my life, I've got 2 packets left. Plenty.
Of course, one of the side-effects of the drug is that you can't ejaculate. For most of my life I had the opposite problem. Everything's balancing up. I already achieved lifetime membership of the mile-high club long ago (solo division).
If you missed previous HNTs, you can access all the old half baked thursday posts here.~
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12 September 2006 at 12:39
Last night I watched The Path To 9/11, the TV drama. Not bad of its kind, and Harvey Keitel is always good. I learned a few things, e.g. the reason Clinton's cruise attack on Bin Laden in the late 1990s missed its target: Pakistani intelligence tipped Bin Laden off.
I also learned that whenever two people say "I love you" over the phone, one of them will be killed. Today I said "I love you" to my partner on the phone. That wasn't wise, when I'm getting on a plane soon.
Meanwhile, the dentist is seeing me again today at 4.45 for a last-minute root-canal job! Hooray! Another $600 spent. My mother would be proud of my deferral to the men in white coats. She won't scratch herself without a doctor's say-so.
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10 September 2006 at 08:05
I missed HNT last week. I worked all day and evening Thursday, despite running a fever due to having some kind of UnHeard Of virus. I made it back home, but just at my front door I had to drop to the ground and violently lose my dinner. The neighbours and the OCD house guest may have enjoyed watching or listening, but with my face in the dirt I wasn't in a position to notice. I was even too sick for HNT.
The house guest has finally left. I won't bore you by listing all the annoyances, let's just say she's a very nice person but I can't stand living in the same house as her. Some would say that means I'm not a nice person. In that case I'm now qualified to join the
Bloggy Church of the Bad Boys.
But everything balances out, and on the plus side it has been good for me to be around someone more damaged than myself. Now I can imagine how some people could actually find me annoying.
As the house guest was leaving for the airport this morning, I tried to think of something genuinely nice to say about her lengthy stay here. So I thanked her for showing me last week how to cook a chicken in an oven roasting bag. And I told her how, after a British plane crash about 25 years ago, where most of the passengers died of smoke inhalation, there was much media discussion of how to prevent a repeat tragedy. Researchers recommended that passengers carry large turkey-roasting bags, and pop them over their heads if smoke fills the aeroplane. For a while, some air travellers (well me, at least) always kept a turkey bag in their hand luggage.
I thought the story would interest her, but from her reaction I could see it perhaps wasn't the best thing to tell someone about to get on a plane. My conversion to the Bad Boy Church is going more smoothly than expected.
I even managed to offend just about every blogvisitor this week, without even trying. Imagine what I could do if I really put my mind to it!
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08 September 2006 at 20:24
In the previous post, I feared that my house guest would do one or other of two annoying things. Well, as keda prophesied, it ended up being both annoying things at once. What are the odds against that happening? Probably about as likely as being in a plummeting plane, and having a heart attack on the way down.
But enough of my holiday plans, here's some trivia:
During a recent survey, women were asked - "What would you do if you woke up and had a penis?" Here are their actual responses...
"I would walk around and prod my husband all night long with it, whatever he is doing I'll be there prodding him with it."
"I would write my name in the snow."
"I would go into my boss' office and lay it on his desk and say: 'Where is my raise?'"
"I would find my ex-boyfriend, go to bed with him and tell him to roll over and try something new."
"I would want a big one and show it off to everyone."
"I could grab myself in public and not be embarrassed."
"I would not lift the lid on the toilet seat while peeing."
"I would measure it both ways."
"Pee off of a tall building."
"I would speed to the hospital and have it surgically removed."
"I would treat women better with it."
"I would love him, and squeeze him, and play with it all day."
"Demonstrate to my husband and my two sons that it is possible to hit the water and not pee all over everything."
"Pin my husband down and slap him in the face with it."
"I would play with it and then make him roll over into the wet spot."
"Go to an adult store and try out all kinds of stimulants to see what was the best."
"Stand up and jump up and down and watch it swing all around."
"See how many donuts I could carry with it."
"Check out my boyfriend's gag reflexes!"
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06 September 2006 at 08:55
There's a friend of a friend staying in my house this week. I could live with that, except that today she uttered the fateful words: "to thank you for having me, I'm going to cook you a special dinner tonight."
From experience, I know that can mean one of two things:
(1) They cake every kitchen surface and every dish and utensil with congealed fat and curry sauce, then leave the next day without cleaning up. Meanwhile, you're supposed to show gratitude.
or
(2) They spend the whole evening in the kitchen, but the cooking keeps getting interrupted by phoning their friends and family overseas, or telling you their life story while they get drunk on the wine they bought you. By 10 p.m. you're so hungry that your stomach starts digesting itself, but because they're apparently doing you a favour, you daren't be rude and rustle up something different for yourself to eat.
Which one will it be tonight? As you can see, I'm not good at being gracious.
But everything balances out. On the plus side, she is a hard core OCD case, so she has spent most of today on her knees in my bathroom, scrubbing away at 8 years' worth of scum, crud and hair.
PS - the dentist has issued a reprieve for the tooth-pulling, and has given me antibiotics to take so I don't have to cancel my trip. Great news, though I was counting on him as my excuse for scrapping the visit to the Fatherland.
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04 September 2006 at 11:52
Spirits much improved now. The physio lady with the brain tumour says she's in fear a lot of the time. Now I know what she means, and I'm not even dying.
Hotboy sent me the new novel, which I have downloaded at work so they'll find it on my computer after the plummeting, and get him some free publicity. Everything balances out. It's set in a school. I have always liked schoolboy adventures, this one is kind of Billy Bunter by Irvine Welsh. I'm enjoying it much more than Harry Snotter. Mind you, that's not saying much.
Hotboy was asking when my trip takes off. The
NPD will compel me to blog the full flight details and itinerary soon. But first there's the cancer dentist boy to see. He might even perform a tooth-pulling and 6 weeks of oxygen treatment in a diving chamber (like last time), thus providing me with the perfect excuse to postpone the collateral damage flight! Everything balances out!
There's a site where you can get official diagnosis of your religion:
Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)created with QuizFarm.com | You are an atheist. You probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul.
Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.
atheism | | 96% | Satanism | | 79% | Buddhism | | 67% | agnosticism | | 67% | Islam | | 54% | Judaism | | 46% | Hinduism | | 46% | Paganism | | 46% | Christianity | | 25% |
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01 September 2006 at 15:43
This post's
LeeAnnesque.
Some years ago, to highlight poor spelling skills in the Australian workplace, a report was compiled, listing reasons given by employees for taking sick leave.
Classic examples included "removal of aviaries", "early stages of Parking Disease", "undescended tentacles", and "migrant headaches."
The report also listed 25 different spellings of diarrhoea.
I spent an hour weeding today. Nothing like a bit of scrambling around in the earth to lift the spirits. The pills are kicking in, and I smiled several times today. I'm looking forward to reading two great new novels on the plane, by Irvine Welsh and another Scots guy. What a fortunate creature I am!
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