Monday afternoon
I am eating nuts.1 I am thinking about driving later, going for a drive2, looking for something interesting to eat.3 I am listening to the Chameleons.4 It is uncommonly cold and grey, and I am bored enough to do footnotes to my bloggetry.5 I am editing a work on tourism management.6 Sigh. Guess who's quitting early, drinking a litre of red wine and smoking a big fat joint?
1 Yes, I am nibbling Nobby's nuts. I had to. I didn't want Nobby to nibble mine. Although, now I come to think about it, I don't have any objection as such to having my nuts nibbled. Gently. If your teeth meet, that's not gently. If they gnash, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a man's nether regions. Return
2 I was planning the same the other night. It's a good job I didn't. I don't have a licence and the police were RBTing* everyone. I would surely be pulled over: the Smegma** is such a bomb, you'd think you needed to be drunk to drive it.Return
* An RBT is a "random breath test". The police here don't tend to pull you over if you are driving erratically, swerving all over the road or generally making a menace of yourself -- we call that "owning a ute". Instead, they set up roadblocks and test all and sundry. It doesn't necessarily make the roads any safer -- because they block main roads and not pub carparks, but it keeps them busy on a cold night. Return
** The Smegma is my car (thanks to S. for the name; it couldn't be more appropriate). A Mitsubishi Sigma. If you don't know what one of those is, imagine a midsized silver and rust saloon, from which a piece falls roughly weekly. If you are planning to give Dr Zen a lecture about the hypocrisy of being a two-car family and preaching green ethics at the same time, don't bother. He'd rather be a hypocrite than walk. Especially given the lack of pavements. And the many utes. Return
3 Okay, yes, for a vegetarian, a plane might be more appropriate. There is a small focus group somewhere in Sydney whose brief is to invent ever more inedible veggie food. I bet it amuses them no end. I remember the great pleasure I felt wandering around Chennai, and seeing restaurants marked "Meat". The reversal of the paradigm almost made the repulsive stench of the city bearable. Actually, dining out in Chennai is great fun. You pay 15, maybe 20 rupees (about 30 pence) and a man brings you a banana leaf with a pile of rice in the middle. He also brings you several little metal pots, filled with several courses of food. This is a thali. You eat it with your hands -- actually, just your right hand (Indians, as do many of the world's peoples) wipe their arses with their left hand and consider eating with it to be uncouth (not to mention dangerous, given that India is swarming with parasites in the form of bacteria, worms and amoebae). The food is usually delicious, although much hotter than you'd get from a curryhouse (putting the lie to the myth that the Poms invented hot curries to cover up the flavour of off meat) and it's all you can eat. The thought of it makes my feet itch.Return
4 Early 80s postpunk. The Chameleons saved the life of a friend of mine, or at least their singer, Mark Burgess did. My friend was suicidal. His gf had left him for his best friend (why, I have no idea) and he spent three months in his bedroom (I'm not kidding; he literally stayed in the room, not coming out -- he had to be passed food and antidepressants). In desperation, his brother wrote to Burgess and asked him whether he could say anything to comfort B. Burgess -- an emotional man himself, if his songs are anything to judge him by -- wrote him a letter of exquisite sympathy -- nay, empathy, he found from his own life times when he had been just as down -- not just a best wishes, mate, but a letter to treasure. B. recovered from his slump rapidly after that. It was as though it had never happened.Return
5 I am resolutely refusing to admit to loneliness. I last saw another human being, outside of a TV screen, on Saturday morning. Yes, I know, I could walk in the park and I would possibly spy a jogger. But that is hardly interaction, although I could surprise myself by saying hello.* Who knows? Perhaps one of those joggers could be a likeminded soul, desperate to meet someone like me... hmm, not likely. No one of a like mind to me is all that likely to be running round Bulimba Creek in the rain, are they? No, they're more likely to be rattling round in a rustbucket, trying to find something interesting to eat.Return
* Why would that be a surprise? I have mentioned my agoraphobia, which is not so much fear of crowds as fear of repercussions (I don't think there's a word for that -- does anyone know the Greek for repercussions? I doubt Tom will have read all the way down to here, but if he has, perhaps he will let me know what I should call it). One of its many niggling outcomes is an inability to say hello to strangers (and sometimes people I know -- it infuriates Mrs Zen when her relatives call and I don't leap to my feet, hand outstretched, yelling "hiya, how you doin', how's the job/health/wife/kids/skin problem" -- okay, okay, I have to admit that that's probably down to sheer diffidence rather than any particular fear of the consequences of hailing my wife's rellies; although, now I think of it, I do have a generalised fear that saying hello will be taken as an invitation to talk to me, not something that I ever find satisfying, and I'm sure they don't either).Return
6 I know.Return
posted by Dr Zen @ 2:10 pm
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