In what order shall we eat the pets?

I think that's what they said as part of happy chatter to the new budgie. They told the bird they'd eat it last. That's nice, it must feel safer. I'm sure they meant it in a "if we have to" way and not "let's make dinner plans".

The budgie just trilled. It probably called dibbs on a cat.

Failed to Kick Ass

In the movie Kiss Ass Nicholas Cage's character Big Daddy revealed how you never see the skin parts around the eye through a mask—you use make-up to match the mask colour to the point you have panda eyes so no matter where the mask moves in its limited run around the sockets there's no pink skin to show up and ruin the menacing atmos.

Being human and susceptible to Big Hollywood and having a black shirt on with a hole in it the size of a marker pen's nose on the front I grabbed a black marker pen and drew a spot through the hole so my pallid flesh would not spotlight through. 

I am large of tum and the shirt shifts. Within a moment I was showing skin and I put another spot on. Then it happened again. I realised I'd have to go the full panda eye, a big, Sunday lazy blob on my the left of my tum in order for that camouflage to work. 

I didn't do it. I didn't want to have to wash it off when I got home, I was already dealing with two small blobs, so I went "fuck it, I give up."

That shirt is now house wear; not for public use. Unless I panda eye my tummy and I don't want to do that. 

Pandas, those bamboo chewing tricksters with the cuddling and inability to fuck.

... rumoured to have its old frogs

That's what it told me Zarithpa was famous for. It's such an odd phrasing but pleasing. And also, old frogs. How do they know? How are they making sure someone isn't swapping out dead frogs for new to sucker in yet more into their brazen old frog trade?

Warlords II. Just about the must fun game ever.

Terrifying

I had to remote in from a new PC and it was terrifying. Not heart thudding terror but heightened awareness of it all having happened before; a sense memory of near death.

It went fine, the ill-ease ebbed and while it did not pass I did not trip into unreasoned panic.

That’s life with a workplace mental health injury; ordinary things can give you the deep frights.

A day

Resourced

In a re-spawn I gained access to resources I’d never imagined. It’s like having a bat cave but without the batabs to back it up. The flabs yes; abs no.

That makes me batecstatic. 

Bus sads 

I met someone who had no cash but was catching a bus that didn’t use MyWay. I gave them a ten without them asking and I waved off their offer of an e-transfer back. I saw them get on and they smiled goodbye.

When I was a student I was busted-arse poor. I lived near my brother. I ran into him at an intersection and he gave me a twenty. He earned money in band gigs. That twenty was magic. It meant I could pay house share expenses and get a can of Diet Coke. I didn’t ask for it; he just knew what it was like to have no money and he gave me a twenty. That’s the kind of generous cat he is. Ever since I’ve tried to pay that forward.

In the old days of Canberra a begging scam was “I’ve lost my wallet; can I have two bucks for fare home?” You’d hand over two bucks which back then covered a ride then watch them walk to another person and tell the same tale. In front of you; because they did not give a fuck. So the counter was to keep a ten ride ticket with two rides left and if they asked for money you offered that. I don’t think I had to use it but it was there at the ready. But this was the genuine deal and I re-dealt a good turn.

I had the glow of a rescue done and I felt batecstatic. 

Oh God!

I was leaving a complex on foot when nausea swamped and I threw up on the grass behind the letter boxes. In the distance was a muffled “Oh God!” from the unit nearest to me. I can’t be certain that was cause and effect but it seemed a perfect riposte. I threw up two more times before I got to the car and then dry wretched leaning on the back until throat burn. I drove to the nearest servo and got a Diet Coke to de-acid the throat and then, puddling sweat with the AC cranked, furtled home. As I drove the relief of nausea clear washed over and I re-felt batecstatic.

That’s a threefer; a fucking batthreefer.

Things that could have killed me: a minature Volxwagon

It was lying on the path twixt the shed and the house and had my lumbering, shuffling over-fed self stood on the one to thirty-two scale black Volkswagen Beetle then my flat feet would have slipped, I'd have fallen backward and caved in my skull heel on the concrete path. 

NowMikey saw it and kicked the car under a table. 

If the multi-verse theory is correct and the universe is but multi-versions of me then a decent chunk of those mes are dead.

That would have been some coroner's report though. 

(HashTag)Silverlining.

Hands deep in whale spoof

I'm still wading through Moby Dick, reading it in bursts on my iPhone. I recently got through a chapter about the narrator's experience at de-lumping spermaceti, the oil taken from the whale's head.

Of course he shortens spermaceti to sperm and there are many passages of how much he enjoys being up to his arms in the stuff and how pleasant a task of squeezing the lumps it is.

The name of the chapter is "A Squeeze of the Hand".

An excerpt:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. 

I am not so old as to find that deeply hilarious.

OLD MAN YELLS AT PHONE

The trouble with re-opening wounds of mental trauma is falling into expressions of angry grief.

I was reminded of my life of people with a duty of care for me thugging me over and I started yelling. Then I sat down with food, made whilst yelling, then yelled at my iPhone sitting next to me. I presume my angry trauma-afflicted self recognised phone equals persons being yelled at on the other end so I yelled at it even though the phone was off.

Angry yelling at people who are not there is actually normal; there's a bunch of therapy techniques that use it. It's not the first time I've yelled at a phone either but traditionally that was applied as a phone was ringing or after a call ended.

Trauma: it's traumatic. For me and my phone.

UPDATE: I was lying on my bed and lifted my phone to use it when my hand sprang open to throw the phone into my teeth. Well played, iPhone...