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DesDownunder

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Blog Entries posted by DesDownunder

  1. DesDownunder

    (27) My Land

    By DesDownunder,

    I don't know how long this newspaper link will be available, but thought you might like to see some shots of my state of South Australia. I am tempted to say the photos make it look better than it is, but that could just be that living here we tend to take it all for granted.
    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0...from=public_rss
    Photo Number 3 is not my house.

  3. DesDownunder
    I was looking through the illustrious blogs here at AwesomeDude, when I had a terrible thought.
    I wasn't struck by the number of people all having various traumatic moments, myself included, as I was by the way we all rushed in, keyboard at the ready, to offer help, assistance and just plain good wishes to all of us who were suffering, having a down moment.
    Then I thought about the real world outside of AwesomeDude and Codey's World. The raging car drivers, the insane profiteers, the elite socialites fussing over inanities, the mindless robberies, thuggings, muggings and various other horrors of existence on Earth, all made me think an even more terrifying thought. What if we, few in number that we are, what if we are all that is left of the nice , the good, and caring human beings on the planet.
    Has it come to this that we are all that remains of what is good about human existence?
    Now that is a scary thought.
    Okay, I know it is not true. I know there lots of good people all over the globe, but we only get reports of the bad guys doing horrible things. Acts of violence and mayhem are everywhere.
    So I have decided to turn off the computer for few hours and go out there and see if I can be nice to someone, whether they want me to or not. Damn it, I'm going to go and love someone just for being on the planet at the same time as me.
    Or is that another scary thought?
    Peace and love, my brothers and sisters, are not scary thoughts.

    This hippie moment brought to you by DesDownUnder.
  5. DesDownunder

    58 Hello?

    By DesDownunder,

    So I have three days where I have to get up early...at 9am
    Okay so for most people that is not all that early, but after a lifetime of going to bed as the sun comes,
    9 am for me, is like the middle of everyone else's night.
    I am tired, very tired. It is 3.35 pm and I have just got home. I look longingly at the reason for existence
    but decide to leave the computer off and go to bed for some sleep.
    4.14 pm. Ring-ring, ring-ring. ring-ring, ring-ring, ring-ring, I pick up the phone,
    Me: "Yo!"
    silence...
    Oh No...
    Just as I am about to hang-up a voice says: How are you doing?
    Me: How am I doing, what?
    Voice: pardon?
    Me: You asked me how I am doing, but you didn't say what it was you wanted to know I was doing.
    Voice: Doing?
    Me: You must say what the doing is. I can't guess. Do you want to know how well I am doing the gardening?
    Or do you want to know how well I do the dishes?
    Or how well I do the naughty. I can tell you, I don't get too many complaints.
    I don't do the garden, by the way.
    Voice: I being polite.
    Me: Hello Polite, I being Des.
    Polite: No I am Shiram, being polite:
    Me: How nice. I am Des being annoyed.
    Polite now being Shiram: I knowing English.
    Me: Who told you that?
    Shiram: I did learning at school. I speak English. How are you doing?
    Me: How am I doing, what?
    Shiram: I don't understand.
    Me: Admitting you don't understand is the first step to wisdom.
    Shiram: This is not going right.
    Me: No I suppose it isn't.
    Shiram: I am having speech to say.
    Me: Why is someone getting married?
    Shiram: I am not married.
    Me: you're not? Then who is getting married?
    Shiram: Why is anyone marrying?
    Me: That's what I say too. See I told you, you would get wisdom, all from just admitting you don't understand.
    Shiram; Don't understand what?
    Me: That I don't like being woken up by phone calls.
    Shiram: Are you sleeping?
    Me: Not at the moment.
    Shiram: I am confused.
    Me: I am tired.
    Shiram: I am tiring too.
    Me: We should go to bed.
    CLICK!
    Okay so we never got past the "Yo"
    but I can fantasize a little can't I?

  6. DesDownunder
    Should I use my blog to tell you of something I am proud?
    (inner Voice:) No, no, that would seem like bragging.
    (other inner voice:) Do it, do it, yes tell everyone what you did.
    Perhaps it would be wrong of me, but damn it, it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to.
    (inner voice:) don't say 'brag.'
    What should I say then?
    (other inner voice:) tell them you want to ....pst, pst whisper whisper
    Okay so I want to share the following little story with you all.
    In effort to be in the face of all who need me to be out and in their faces, I recently made a post on YouTube in the comments section of a posting of Rachmaninoff's 2nd piano concerto. Here is the finale.

    I have chosen a different version (from the one I commented on,) for this post, but the experience is the same except for the pianist's hair. Following are the comments between myself and two people who replied. All was well until I wanted to let people know I was gay in an open YouTube comment section.
    Should I have done that? Well I consulted the inner voices and they actually agreed I should do it, so I did.
    Here are the comments:


    Desdownunda:
    I was 16 when I first heard this concerto. I still love it today at 66. It is one of those pieces of music that makes you realise that life without music would be intolerable, that death is suspended whenever it is played. How can such beauty be so fleeting? Just like life itself.
    As long as someone plays it, and someone hears it, adores it, then our love, lives forever.
    missiheartballet:
    @Desdownunda - beautifully said.
    MrAkihiros:
    @Desdownunda That's beautifully said. Are you by any chance a poet? Your prose sings, just like rachmaninoff.
    Desdownunda:
    @MrAkihiros Thanks, I am flattered by your words. I am gay, so yes, I write poetry. My poetry and short stories are at CodeysWorld, please Google for it.
    Look for DesDownunder's stories under Authors. So far I have not received any further comments. Maybe the shock that they wrote to a gay man was too much for them.
    I'll keep y'all advised.
    (inner voice:) should I ring 911?
    (other inner voice:) no, call a defence lawyer.
  8. DesDownunder
    So here I contemplate the meanings of blogging.
    Dear Diary...
    Dear Journal...
    Dear Dairy...
    I'll keep that for if and when I ever get invited to a farm again.
    Dear personal log...
    What was the name of the Captain in Star Trek?
    I will tell you, it was Captain Slog,
    because every episode started with a voice saying, "This is Captain Slog."
    Now where was I? Oh Yes,
    Dear Desmond's Log...
    Uh Oh that sounds a bit rude, doesn't it, or am I just writing things into my log?
    I suppose if I were to write to my log, I could thank it for all the good times it has given me, or I could tell it off for all the times it let me down, or even for the embarrassments it has caused in public places.
    No, You guys wouldn't want read to my logging adventures. Would you?
    I could call it "Boy's Own Log," or "Logs Long Gone."
    But then again writing on my log could be somewhat painful, might raise up some hairy memories and I might have to divulge the bones of my past. Better to avoid that I think.
    Dear Wet Log...
    "Don't I mean Web Log?"
    NO! "I'm Bloggin' in the rain."
    Dear epistle to myself... too formal. Perhaps I could use it on Sundays and while I write, I could sing "Blog of Ages,' or something.
    Dear written record of my thoughts and ramblings...you gotta be kidding me.
    Dear personal thoughts' file, posted on a website for the rest of the world to look at.. Yeah, Right!
    I know!
    Dear Blog,
    I was going to write something but I have run out of time and anyway I've forgotten what I was going to say, and I doubt anyone would comment anyway, unless they want to, Please?
    Blogging is so much fun.

  9. DesDownunder
    As I promised, (or did I threaten? I can't remember) I have returned. (you there in the back row, stop groaning!)
    I have a new computer, a new fence and the B/f has a new clutch..in his car, and the Bank has a better return on the money it has loaned us, but most important of all, the local supermarket has installed a new donut machine, so we have donuts for breakfast again. The B/f is overjoyed.
    (It doesn't take much to keep him happy, but then you only have to look at me to know that.
    I managed to replace the fence for only a couple of hundred dollars more than fixing the old one. I found a handyman who is an excellent tradesman. He worked steadily away all day listening to a Left wing radio station whilst cursing our present Right wing politicians, all so he that could raise his kids. What a nice man.
    For those with the curiosity on all geek things, the old computer's motherboard mouse circuitry expired.
    I had been promising myself a new computer for September, but was holding out for the new AMD quad cores motherboards.
    Unfortunately they did not materialize here and the international reviews are still indicating the Intels as better.
    As it was a new machine, I could get Windows Vista OS at greatly reduced cost along with Office 2007.
    I am not happy. Oh the computer is fine 6600 Intel quad 4 core with 4 gig RAM plus 2x500 gig Hard drives. What I am not happy with is Vista.
    Now before you all go telling me I should have got a Mac, let me explain somethings to you.
    I am of the opinion that we humans have a genetic disposition to either Mac or Windows.
    Trying to tell me that I should use a Mac is like telling me I should sleep with a woman.
    It ain't gonna happen!
    And that is what is so infuriating about Windows Vista, If I had wanted a Mac I would have bought one.
    At the moment Linux is looking rather inviting as the most readily available OS that will allow exploration of the computer development and environment, as opposed to the Mac and now Windows pre-emptive control over for what and how we use our computers.
    To carry my sex life analogy a little further, I rather feel like I have woken up with a couple of transgendered persons (one of each) either side of me, each one trying to be like the other whilst vying to excite me, of course without success.
    So in case you haven't got the idea, I detest Vista and Office 2007 has, for all intents and purposes been neutered. I can't see that it will be productive or even reproductive in its present form.
    The free office programs are going to be very popular, seducing everyone with with their well known attributes.
    I would tell Mac and Windows to go do things to each other but I rather feel they already have.
    Oh well, fortunately (to a degree) Xp is more than adequate for my needs and Vista can sit on the other hard drive until Bill fixes it or replaces it, hopefully not with another abortion.
    So now I have the joy of rebuilding and installing lots of software.
    I just hope it is all worthwhile...
    Now if I can just train the b/f not to use my morning wood as a donut rack.
    err donut anyone?
  10. DesDownunder
    Some time ago I was at the local office warehouse where they had these you-beaut $400 office chairs on sale for $99.
    So of course always willing to save money by spending it, I bought one.
    It was terrific. It had a gas lift that worked. My old chair didn't do that. The new one could up and down at the touch of a lever. Kewl! If I lent back it reclined till I was almost horizontal. I was having fantasies of sex in a chair.
    Like all new love affairs, I then started to discover its failings. The biggest one was that the seat was designed for a posterior three times the size of mine. It was truly an office manager's chair. I could cuddle two secretaries in this chair, it was so huge.
    Also over time I started to develop a bad back. The little disc thingies in my spine would jump out of position and twang, I was in agony until I clicked it back. The new chair was an object of abject disappointment. It had one saving grace; it's lift mechanism worked so I could sit at the right height to the desk.
    Well the recent hot weather took its toll on my poor spine and I thought I had reached the end of days. My legs had seized up and I had an agonising pain from my rear end down to my calf muscles, (such as they are. Don't get excited.)
    Then the weather dropped 20 degrees. And my spine snapped frozen with the disc in the wrong position.
    The b/f was asking if he should ring the doctor or the undertaker. I'm not certain which he preferred.
    The doctor was no help. He gave me a flu injection which made my arm hurt.
    I searched the Internet for treatment of the symptoms. Eureka! Chiropractor! Of course why didn't I think of that.
    The chiropractor listened to my tale of woe about my tail.
    Snap, crack and a pop, and all was well. What a great man he is.
    He said I wasn't sitting up straight.
    So I told him I couldn't do that because I was gay. He rolled his eyes.
    He then explained that the trouble was with my chair not supporting my lumbar region properly.
    Aha -so down to the used car parts I go and buy a secondhand sports-car bucket seat.
    I found one that fitted me perfectly. It had a sticker on it that read "Crash Proof."
    Back home after drilling and tapping holes and threads, I fitted this futuristic flight seat to the base of the chair.
    I sat down and adjusted the height and the back until I was cocooned in the comforting protection of this wonderful seat.
    "Houston? Houston, I say, I am ready for take off."
    "And there is DesDownUnder form Oz lined up for the start of the Indianapolis 500. Vroom, vroom."
    "Warp nine, Mr Spock."
    Oh Wow, this great.
    What's more I won't be killed the next time Windows crashes.
    I wonder if I should fit an air bag to the monitor?

  11. DesDownunder

    83. Test the Blog

    By DesDownunder,

    The blogs are not looking as they should, so I am testing out posting a new entry in my blog just to see what it looks like.
    If you have been plagued by spam in your blog, I have adjusted the guest permissions which should stop that from happening.
    Please let me know about any spam in your blog and I will delete it.
  12. DesDownunder
    It's Friday afternoon and I am picking up an old friend's ancient computer for which he no longer has any use. I will give it to a deserving family I know.
    At least I would if he was home. He is late. Twenty minutes late. So I am sitting in my car waiting, when I hear a door slam in the house next door.
    "Sorreeee," says a voice that I just know does not belong to an Australian outback construction worker.
    Sure enough, a young man in his early twenties appears wearing a shirt and shorts designed to show his decorator muscles he must have got for Christmas. At least I have something to look at whilst I wait.
    I immediately think that his name is probably Twinky-boy as he walks gently around the car parked in the driveway. As he turns around to get in the car I decide his name is probably Hot-bot.
    Anyway he started the car, one of those nice little 4-cylinder cars from the Far-east. Then he gets out of the car and walks up to the garage door which is one of those full-width roll-up type doors in a lovely shade of suburban beige. I watch Hot-bot as he reaches up to a ledge and takes down what is obviously a remote control.
    Now I have never had the money for such luxuries, but I am pretty sure this must be a remote control for the roll-up door. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for it to be the TV remote unless the door was particularly slow in rolling up. Then again it didn't make a lot of sense to keep the garage door remote outside where anyone could find it.
    Our hero gets back into the car and waves the remote at the door, which sure enough slowly, but not that slowly, begins its ascent into the garage ceiling space.
    When the door is half-way up, I watch as the car slowly moves forward towards the door. The bonnet of the car goes under the rising door and just when you would expect the young man to exert those delightful thigh muscles and apply the brakes, the car sped up and rammed the upper half of the now bent and stationary garage door.
    It was about now that I realised I was privileged to watch an actual urban legend occurring before my very eyes. Would I see a Darwin Award?
    The young man sat in the car with his mouth open. He seemed genuinely surprised that the door had been by hit the car. Possibly he was wondering why the car had been hit by the door.
    Slowly he backed the car away from the door, but the now hanging bottom bar of the door was caught on the front of the car just where the windscreen ends and the bonnet starts. He continued backing the car away and somehow managed to pull the roller door so it was bent in the other direction.
    The door tried to return to its previous instruction to roll up, but gave up after a another few feet, looking quite the worse for the ordeal. It looked a little like the Sydney Opera House sails would have looked if they had been made from roofing iron.
    The car bonnet seemed okay.
    Again I heard the door from inside the house slam and there suddenly appeared another young man of the tender twenty-something years wearing torn off jeans and a tight fitting T-shirt adorning his own decorator muscles. They must have bought a matching set, although this one might have paid extra for the super thighs version with golden tan.
    Twinky got out of the car and rushed up to the damaged door, touching it, caressing it as one would an injured animal. "Oh No!" he exclaimed.
    "How did that happen?" asked the other set of muscles.
    "I don't know. One moment the door was going up the next minute the door stopped as I was driving towards it," and with that he burst into tears.
    The other young man tenderly put his arms around his friend and patted his shoulder, "It's okay love, we will sort it out, come on."
    They reached up and grabbed the bottom of the bent door that was now about five feet off the ground.
    I watched as they twisted and pulled at the door. I tossed up whether I should try to help, but decided that as neither of them knew I was there and that I had forgotten to put on my own set of muscles before I left home, it was probably best for me to remain hidden in my car. Less embarrassing for us all, I thought.
    Then they gave me an insight in to their bedroom antics as they topped their previous contortions by grabbing the bottom of the door lifting their knees towards their chests and swung furiously like a pair of delicate chimpanzees.
    I placed my hands over my mouth and eyes, lest I should betray my presence with an audible sound from deep in my throat. Looking between my fingers I saw the miracle of the door slowly start to descend till it nearly reached the ground.
    "Stand back," said the torn off jeans clad super thighed one of the two, and with that he performed a flying Kung Fu leap that meant he probably worked as a stunt man. His foot landed in the middle of the dent in the door.
    He bounced off the now straightened door and fell to the ground. His friend rushed to his side, "Are you alright?"
    He knelt down and placed his friend's head in the folds of his lap, right on his very thin shorts.
    I was about to reach for my cell phone to ring emergency. Damn, I should have recorded this.
    His friend stirred and lifted his arm to pull his friends head down to him and they kissed in the drive-way.
    No, I am NOT making this up.
    For some reason I was almost expecting them to burst into song.
    "There's a place for us,
    A time and place for us...
    Somewhere..." *
    Slowly they picked themselves up off the ground and helped each other into their house. The door slammed behind them.
    A short time later my straight friend turned up. I asked if he knew the next door neighbours.
    He told me he thought they might be gay and that they were accident prone.
    "No shit!" said I.
    "Yes," he said, "they've only been there a week and last Tuesday one of them drove over the rubbish bin. I don't expect them to last the month out."
    "I don't know about that," I said, "They seem quite resourceful and very much in love."
    * Yes I know its West Side Story...again, but it did happen in an Adelaide Western Suburb.
    Edit: Tidying up the writing.
  13. DesDownunder
    Do I need to tell you what I am going to do with this, even though it means I will become destitute...again?
    Y ‘Management’?
    What exactly is the problem with the current generation of management? They go out of their way to call in experienced staff and then seemingly setting them up to belittle them, and their experience. Having now lived with this new management style in a number of different situations, I am absolutely fed up with management's incompetence and disrespect.
    It seems like managers are always too busy to listen to the advice that they ask for, and then demand that the task, whatever it happens to be, be done their way, despite the advice proffered. When it is pointed out that there are inherent dangers in the task being performed in the way demanded, they then play the old game of overriding the staff’s advice with, "I'm the manager, and you must do as I say."
    If that isn’t bad enough, some time later, when the manager returns to find the staff complying, and performing the task as he demanded, he insists that it is dangerous, and that they are not to do that again. He has completely ignored his own responsibility for the situation, and leaves the staff in a state of disbelief.
    This creates stress, anxiety and tension in the staff, to such a degree that only three outcomes are possible.
    1. The staff attempts to continue working; an accident occurs, with endangerment to the staff or the equipment, or both.
    2. The staff leaves, because they believe their resignation is what the manager is trying to engineer by the above tactics.
    3. The staff leaves because they do not want to become a casualty, or work under what they feel are intimidating conditions.
    It is this last one that often leaves the management in a perplexed state of mind. Modern managers feel that they have done nothing wrong, when in reality, they understand neither the nature of the human relationships involved, including the employees’ relationship to their environment, nor the limitations of the equipment.
    They justify their demands for the sake of a client, or an outcome, without seeing that the way they relate to the staff actually increases the risk of catastrophe to personnel, equipment or that all important, outcome. Of course, when even minor infractions of work place events cause problems, it is believed to be the fault of the staff. Such managers rarely realise that their own inability to relate to the warnings from the staff is the root cause of the resulting problems; even seemingly unrelated problems, due to stress. In addition, when the manager thinks he knows better than experienced qualified staff and physically interferes in the work place, any resulting disaster is considered to be due to the staff’s incompetence, or failure to understand what the manager wanted. In fact, any disaster is very often because the management does not allow for the experienced methodology of the staff; the very same staff who were chosen for their experience. At best, non-existent or confusing communication can be traced back as the underlying problem.
    How have this generation of managers reached their positions of power with so little understanding of effectively managing their employees? Much of the problem is due to generation ‘Y’ managers having only an administration degree that included instruction in regarding ‘human resources’ as being ‘things’ to be used, instead of them being people with whom to collaborate. This is much the same as the much older school of management, which was taught to regard the staff as the enemy; as employees never giving worthwhile service unless they "came to work with fear in their bellies."
    Good managers do not need to know every detail of the workplace environment if they have a relationship of trust with their employees, and on whom they can rely to furnish relevant advice on the operation and maintenance of the equipment. Previously, older managers had generally acquired their business knowledge and human relationship skills on the job, over many years of workplace experience.
    Sadly, this management expertise is no longer being passed down from older managers to younger ones, resulting in people's livelihoods, and lives, being endangered because of the mentoring legacy having been largely abandoned.
    This places further tension on management, and also stresses the staff, who cannot help but believe that, when their advice is ignored, or they are told that an instruction was given when it clearly was not, they (the employees) are being given a less than subtle 'hint' to resign.
    ‘Hands-on’ management is seriously compromising when it does not recognise the areas of skill and knowledge that should be left for the employees to provide. The result of this management style can only be less satisfactory than it should be, with much unhappiness for all involved.
    However, when the situation has reached the impasse of confrontation between manipulation and defence, the outcome is usually defeat for both parties, ending in replacement of personnel.
    It really doesn’t matter whether the more experienced staff cannot handle the new managerial methods, or the new managers can’t relate to skilled workers, the effect is the same; management is frustrated, and employees feel dehumanised, and disconnected from their work.
    The employees will always find themselves disadvantaged in any appeal to higher authorities, controlling or affecting the organisation, who have a vested interest in supporting the managers they have hired. But the actual events which lead to that appeal usually have repercussions for the managers as well, unless the employees decide to step aside gracefully in an effort to not harm the welfare of the organisation...for which they may still have an affection.
    And that is something these managers just do not understand. Worse, are the mental contortions that they enlist to dismiss even the best-intended help, such as contained in this essay.
  14. DesDownunder
    I don't get the local newspaper anymore, I stopped its delivery 14 years ago, (1995). The milkman used to deliver the milk, from his horse-drawn milk-van, but he stopped ages ago. The horse would move down the street and stop at the customer's houses without any direction from the milkman.
    The bread used to be delivered daily when I was a kid, and a big truck used to stop outside our house on Thursdays, selling fruit and vegetables. I can even remember the ice man delivering blocks of ice for the ice-chest before we bought our first fridge.
    Grandma had a washboard which she used to scrub the dirty clothes, and a big copper pot with a built in wood-fired furnace to boil water. She would boil the sheets and towels in it. She also used it to scald the chickens after she had decapitated them with an axe. The scalding made the feathers easier to pluck.
    She also had the luxury of a hand operated wringer consisting of two rubber rollers through which you passed the washed clothes to squeeze out some of the water.
    The wood stove in the kitchen wasn't made from wood, but from heavy cast metal with hotplates just above the cavity where you burned the wood for heating the pans on the hotplates.
    Carpets had to be taken outside the house and hit with a handheld beater to beat the dust out of them. You would have to shower off the dust on yourself afterwards.
    Doctors made house-calls, but you had to walk to the chemist shop to get the prescription filled, if you lived long enough to get there.
    There was no telephone in our house, but there was a public phone-booth down the street and calls cost 2 pennies. Taxis were quite expensive and cost about 40 cents for the first mile.
    Hospitals smelt of ether and disinfectant, either of which encouraged people to throw up, and you would be lucky to come out still breathing, which was something patients did almost under protest.
    There was no hand basin in our bathroom at home. You had to lean over the bathtub and use the bath tap to wash your hands and clean your teeth.
    The old gas heater to warm the water for a shower or bath, exploded into life with a flame that was half the height of a man. More than once I heard reports of someone being blown up while taking a shower.
    Luckily we had a mirror (tarnished) in a splintered wooden frame, to allow us to see that we had combed our hair with enough oil or grease to lube the car that nobody on our street could afford.
    In winter we warmed ourselves with an open fire in the built-in fire place in the living room and rubber hot water bottles in our beds. In summer we sweated in front of an electric fan. The rich folk on the other side of town perspired in front of bigger fans.
    The toilet was out the back of the house and had no light except the candle you took with you. You pulled a chain hanging from the water cistern above your head to flush the toilet. Spiders built there cobwebs in every corner of the toilet. Sometimes it was like going into an Indiana Jone's Tomb of Terror just to have a pee.
    We had the luxury of electric lights -one per room, which we had to remember to turn on and off, when we entered or left the room to save money.
    I walked a mile to school every week day, and on Saturdays, I walked a mile in the other direction to go to the special kids matinee screening of a movie at the local 'picture theatre'. We usually got a B grade movie, cartoons, a serial, and a main movie after an intermission when we bought lots of candy and ice cream, no popcorn in those days. There were prizes for competitions and boys and girls who were in the birthday club. The movies cost the equivalent of 15 cents. (One shilling and threepence.) The candy was about 1o cents a box.
    You could buy your lunch at school from the canteen which was run by the ladies' auxiliary. 30 cents would see you with a cholesterol packed lunch of meat pie, pasty, a cream bun and a drink. Sauce (ketchup) was a penny extra for the pie or pasty. A cordial drink was sixpence (5 cents).
    The radio was the main source of entertainment in the home and at night after the evening meal of meat and three vegetables, the family would sit around listening to radio plays, quiz shows and serialised stories. It was much like free to air television without the pictures and a whole lot less hype. I still think the radio plays served to inspire images that today's movies provide without much effort on our part other than to convince ourselves that the digital effects are real.
    After school, the neighbourhood kids would play ball games in the street, only stopping for the occasional car or horse riders to go past, and that was a main road.
    Saturday nights my family would take the bus or tram to go out dancing to any of the various hotels or clubs. No gambling, no striptease, just good big band music for dancing waltzes and foxtrots, etc., with alcoholic beverages. We kids would play hide and seek behind the club. (Not that kind of hide and seek, you dirty minded people. We were not yet even 11 years old.)
    Speaking of dirty minded people, policemen would arrest men they discovered, (often by entrapment) in public toilets and parks, for 'acts of gross indecency' and the penalty for the guilty could be jail for up to 2 years with hard labour. These cases were listed in the "Cause List" in the local newspaper and were eagerly, even if with dread, read by gay men to see if any of their friends had been arrested.
    Then came rock n' roll, and by 1960 everything changed, forever...but that is another era, to be followed by yet others.
  15. DesDownunder
    Cole has provided some advice on making contact with the boys:
    I imagine the following might be the outcome of taking Cole's advice.
    "Oh Hi. I was just walking past your garage door when I thought you might be able to help me with my phone. I don't seem to be able to get the camera thingy working on the phone and wondered if you nice muscly boys have a clue?"
    "Ahh, yeah, sure Pops, we can help," said the twinkier one of the two.
    In less time than it takes to say "What nice thighs you have," I found myself the proud owner of the only mobile phone in existence to have a footprint on its surface from where it was kick-boxed into terminating its services. The blood will probably wash off, I am sure, but there are several broken thingamy-jigs and holes in the plastic case.
    Still the boys did serve nice cake and tea, when we got back from the emergency room where the Kung-Fu expert had to have several small transistors and printed circuit board pieces removed from his foot under a local anesthetic. His friend held his hand throughout the procedure. The surgeon wasn't going to let him, until they showed him the medical power of attorney they held in each others names.
    I did think they went a bit far when they kissed and shouted "Hooray" every time the surgeon removed another bit of plastic from his foot.
    I tried to pay for the emergency room but they said they were completely covered medically as a condition that their parents had insisted on when they told them they were going to live together.
    It seems that their parents were hoping for grandchildren and didn't want them to have any unexpected hospital bills.
    Feeling somewhat defeated and quite phoneless, I decided to drive home. The boys with their arms around each other waved me farewell, while the sunset over suburbia in a blaze of innocence not seen since before apple trees grew in Eden.
    Unlike the previous entry this one is based loosely on fictitious thoughts inspired by Cole's above advice.

  16. DesDownunder
    I can't believe I have done it again. No not that, you dirty minded boys!
    You may remember, or not, that sometime ago I fell up some marble stairs and broke some front ribs.
    This time I fell backwards in the bath tub and did the back ribs in, (just so I would even things up.)
    My feet slipped out from under me and I was aware I was doing a horizontal levitation before crashing my right ribs into the side of the bath. Actually I was unlucky as I am so light I would have floated down except for the force of the shower water hitting me and speeding up my fall.
    As I was descending, I realised I was wondering if this was "it." Would I strike my head and and crack my skull open and watch my braincell being swept down the drain, swirling in a mass of blood and gooey bits? Would I paralyse myself and just drown in the hot water, my time of death being concealed by the heat of the water?
    I could imagine the b/f coming home and finding my remains all wrinkled by the running water and telling me I had aged quite noticeably since this morning.
    Staggering quickly to my feet, I deduced I had done the ribs in, but wasn't in too bad a shape otherwise.
    I cancelled the fun I had planned for the shower and dried myself with the warm fluffy towel.
    Ice pack to the ribs helped diminish the bruising and the pain.
    But the soreness cut in by morning. So I will just have to grin and bare it for a few weeks while it heals.
    Fortunately, for me, it doesn't hurt to type, so I will be able to report to you all.
    When the next door neighbour heard about me falling in the tub, she announced that perhaps I should think about a nursing home.
    Over my dead body, that's going to happen.
    Perhaps I should get some strong muscly young man to help me shower? Yeah that sounds like a plan.
  17. DesDownunder
    My sense of smell has returned; I can smell the donuts again.
    I can always tell when I am getting better after a bout of the flu' or a cold etc,
    I start to feel myself again. - (You people have one track minds!)
    I also start to feel like feeling the boyfriend again.
    So I told him at breakfast I was feeling better.
    "Anyone I know?" he asked.
    I looked at him. This was unusual, the b/f cracked a joke in the morning, before he finished eating his donuts too.
    It usually takes him all day to work up to a joke.
    Wait a minute, that's the clue, he's not making a joke.
    "Oh I am sorry," I say, "but I have been sick, and I didn't want to give you my cold.
    erm...How long is it since we..."
    "Nearly two weeks," he says looking down at the donut on his plate with almost a lusty stare.
    "Two weeks? Two weeks! oh you poor dear, you must be ready for experimenting with inanimate objects."
    "Oh No. It is alright, I have you." he says with just the faintest flicker of humour in his gorgeous brown eyes.
    "I'll make it up to you, or you can make it up..."
    "That would be nice," he says.
    Nice, nice? Since when has our unbridled excursions into celebrating the meaning of love, been nothing more than "nice?"
    I have my work cut out for me. I'll do the romantic dinner thing tonight, and then a hot tub followed by a lot of cuddling while we watch a movie and then..."

    Okay it is the next morning.
    We both fell asleep in front of a very boring movie.
    Breakfast is looking back at us again. Hot donuts look very tempting at the moment.
    "Tonight?' I ask.
    "Tonight!" he affirms.
    "Tonight, tonight
    I'll see my love tonight.."
    I love the smell of donuts in the morning.

  18. DesDownunder
    I haven't been blogging,
    Because I've been logging,
    A few sick days in bed,
    With a cough and sore head
    And no, I haven't had fun, flogging.
    Right so much for the poetry.
    I feel better now. Have you ever noticed how much better you feel after you visit the doctor.
    I have a great doctor.
    I turned up at the doctor's rooms ten minutes early.
    He sees me straight away. It pays to get the first appointment after lunch.
    I tell him all my woes outlining a plethora of symptoms.
    I hand him a sheet of paper I have typed up on the computer listing the degradations of my bodily functions with times and places of their occurrences.
    He glances at it and throws it aside on the desk. -Just throws it aside as if it was unnecessary!
    Doesn't he realise that the clues to making me alive and well again are contained in the detailed analysis I spent hours typing up for him.
    I could have been resting, sleeping in bed, but no, I am aware that his time is precious so I spent all of the previous night on the computer looking up my symptoms on the Internet; all to help him diagnose the hour of my demise and he just throws it aside like a piece of junk mail.
    He takes my temperature and blood pressure. He listens to my chest and then my lungs.
    "Say Ahhh," he commands, and he looks down my mouth, probably looking for tell tale signs of my sex life.
    "Aha!" he says.
    "What?" I ask.
    "You have a chest infection."
    "And?"
    "Rest up a few days and you will be fine."
    "That's it? I'm not at death's door?"
    "Not as far as I can tell," he says.
    I wonder about getting a second opinion. "As far as you can tell? Should I be concerned?"
    He laughs a boyish giggle and raises an eyebrow with an impish grin, "Just go home and rest. You'll be fine. Trust me I'm a doctor." We both burst out laughing at that remark.
    "Thanks Doc I feel better already."
    "Of course you do." He smiles as he holds the door open for me.
    I sign the medicare papers and walk outside. The sun is shining. I feel great.
    He is such a good doctor.
  19. DesDownunder
    So did y'all miss me? Did ya?
    Didn't even know I was gone, I bet.
    Yesterday at about 2.30 pm. I was getting ready to go give lover boy his coffee break when there was an almighty rumbling and scraping noise form outside the house. It sounded just like the iceberg cutting into the side of the Titanic.
    I looked out the window, but I couldn't see an iceberg in the street, or even a bulldozer. Did I imagine it?
    So I go outside and the first thing I notice is that the overhead power cables are resting on the lower branches of the trees.
    Then I look around and I see it. A flying saucer has landed on the roof of the house...err scratch that, what I actually saw was the 30 foot power pole bent over at about 35* from perpendicular. This is no light weight power pole. It has three extensions for two sets of high tension cables as well as normal voltage and telephone lines. All the cables dangling or dipping precariously into the trees.
    Off in the distance is a smallish tray-truck. I go over to the truck. The driver is on the mobile phone reporting to the police.
    He is about 25, light brown hair closed cropped. His bottom lip protrudes with a sexy fullness from his dimpled chin; his jaw aching to get off the phone and start nibbling on my...I have an sex attention span difficulty which is not helped by his glowing blue eyes framed by his boyish arched eyebrows and upturned nose. Sigh.
    He hangs up the phone. "Are you okay?" I ask, although I have already determined that he is indeed very okay.
    "I'm fine and I can't see anything wrong with the truck."
    Sure enough, the truck doesn't even seem to have a scratch, but he knows he hit the power pole.
    He walks around the truck, grinning a sexy wide mouthed smile that reveal petite, perfect teeth. I guess the smile is from embarrassment, rather than flirting with me or even thinking that the whole situation is funny.
    I watch the way his khaki overalls flow and follow the contours of his lithe young body, whilst my eyes do their best to X-ray them.
    Finally he stops, his hands on his hips, causing his biceps to expand, "I have to go," he says, "the police said they will have a look later." So he mounts his truck (sigh, lucky truck) and drives off. I note his number plate.
    Knowing our overworked police I go back into the house and ring the electricity supply company who promises to send a crew straight away. I leave to go give the beloved one his coffee break.
    ***Time passes***
    Three hours later, (it was a long coffee break), I return home and find the street is covered in emergency vehicles. On the roof of my house is the young truck driver threatening to jump to his death if I do not marry him...err, oh, alright, that is not quite right. The driver is only in my mind and the electric company workers are very busy with cranes and ladders and lift trucks dismantling the lines so they can replace the pole.
    Wow! I exclaim.
    "It's going to be awhile before we can restore power," one of the workers tells me, "Probably around midnight."
    Okay I think to myself that means I can have a sleep and go online at midnight--no problem. Then he drops the bombshell.
    "Before you can have power back you will need to get an electrician to make some repairs," he tells me, "as your service pipe is snapped off at the base."
    "My service pipe is snapped off at the base? I had better go to the emergency room." He walks off muttering something about everyone being a bloody comedian.
    To cut a long story short, they didn't finish till 5am and my electrician didn't arrive till 7.30am. Then I had to wait till midday for the supply company to plug in the service fuses.
    In the meantime the young truck driver was only visible in my dreams, which meant I did not sleep very well at all.
    I of course, have missed you all very much and am launching civil litigation proceedings against everyone who has caused me to be off line for over 20 hours.
    I would sure like to sue the pants off a certain young truck driver. That would make for a satisfactory compensation.
  20. DesDownunder
    On top of the other disasters that 2007 seemed to bring (fence falling over, cars that thought we had a pension plan, water heater that blew up and a few other major catastrophes like the computer needing replacement etc, etc, etc. I am delighted to inform you all that it hasn't finished yet!
    We are in our ninth day of 35 C heat, that's almost 100 F, with no cool change in sight till the 20th March at the earliest. Yes its a record heatwave for March in Adelaide.
    So go on, guess what broke down this time?
    Yes, you got it the -$%*)*&&^$##@% air conditioner!
    At least the computer seems okay working in the 40 C degree heat. CPU reads 55 C.
    So please excuse me if I seem a little short tempered or heated, as I am HOT and not in a good way.
    Okay, okay, was I ever that hot? Yes I was, thank you very much.
    So I am hot bothered, bewitched and bewildered as to why the air conditioner broke down. It just sits their and groans intermittently. They don't make them like they used to. It's only 35 years old. I am nearly twice its age and I don't groan do I?
    No need to answer that!

  21. DesDownunder
    I read Cato's entry at CW on his home being robbed and thought I would comment here rather than expose the horrid tale more publicly there.
    Violence warning: The following is a grisly tale which I have endeavoured to lighten. Yes I am on my soapbox in do-gooder mode. I would say bleeding heart mode, but as you will see it wasn't my heart that was bleeding.
    In January 1998, I opened my door to a knock and received a brick to the head for my trouble.
    With what little sense I had left I shut the door. The brick-layer was so upset that I had managed to lock him out that he started throwing anything he could find at the glass patio door in the hope of shattering the glass.
    I alerted the other half who was in bed watching a movie. I swear the Empire could strike back on our front lawn and he wouldn't hear it.
    I rushed back to the kitchen where the masonry expert was still trying to master his glass shattering skills and picked up the phone to call the police direct-line phone number.
    While the phone was ringing I could see drops of blood falling from my head on to the table in a most inelegant manner.
    Finally the phone was answered, "You have reached your police department, please hold, your call is important to us."
    I hung up and dialled the all service emergency number.
    I was connected to the police immediately and gave them the details and the address, just as the glass door finally shattered and the dreaded invaders (I could now tell there were at least four of them,) yelled out for me to give them all my drugs.
    "Drugs?" They want my vitamin pills? No wait a minute they think I take drugs. They wouldn't know I am allergic to the weed and that I am a control freak who hates losing self-control to some herb or chemical concoction of illicit origin. Gee, even the doctor has to threaten me with alternative punishments to get me to take prescription medicine.
    So I shouted back at them, "We don't have any."
    I grabbed my half-dressed, better half and ran out the door on the other side of our love-nest, we call our home, into the street.
    The police and the neighbours arrived along with an ambulance.
    One of the neighbours was holding ice to my head and I watched trickling icy blood run down her hand, my blood!
    One of my big butch heterosexual male neighbours went searching for the demolition crew. He was very concerned for his little gay mates as he calls us.
    As he was returning from his search I had to stop the police from drawing their guns on him, he truly looked an image of terminator proportions, lurching down street, baseball bat at the ready in his hands. When I explained who he was, one of the police officers said, "Just as well he didn't find them."
    I could hear the police and neighbours exchanging questions about how could these people, "these scum" do these things, about how difficult it was to stop the criminal element, when I heard myself exclaim, "You are asking the wrong questions. You should be asking how come we have developed a society where individuals attack others?"
    In other words, "the system is broke and needs fixing."
    The answers of deprivation, poor education, poverty, unemployment, social injustice and inequality of opportunity as a contribution to crime seems to be furthest from some people's minds.
    Yes, I know there are criminal cartels and drug addicted crazies out there who have abandoned any sense of right and wrong, but they would be less in number if our social structure ensured large portions of the population were not deprived of their basic human rights and self-esteem for the sake of profit that amounts to no more than "legitimate" business avarice.
    These are my thoughts on such matters only, I am sure you have yours.
    I vacate the soapbox.
    PS. I am okay and you can't see any scars because of my old age wrinkles.
  22. DesDownunder
    Okay this is a blatant plug for a great set of endings.
    You all like a good end don't you?
    Have you all read the Story at Codey's World that Codey started and no less than four authors all wrote different endings.
    Whose did you like most?
    Well you can let them know by reading them and voting for the one you like.
    Vote at: http://www.codeysworld.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=436
    No you don't have to vote for mine, vote for the one you like by 30th April. Do it now, then vote.
    Go on Now. Off you go.
  23. DesDownunder
    Are ratings overrated?
    Do they mean anything.
    I sit here looking at the little blog rating stars and wonder why our resident blog geniuses (genii for those of you who think Latin is your native tongue) only rate somewhere between 3.9 and 4.8. (Come to think of it, a native Latin is something we might like to get our tongues around.)
    I mean why do some people get more votes than others?
    And why does the lowest rating have more voters than the highest?
    Was this an act of retaliation against being highly rated, or simply a popular vote to rate someone who deserved some rating while others are overlooked altogether.
    Surely someone deserves 5 out of 5.
    Why do some blogs have no votes?
    You'd think that if people were going to vote for one blog they would at least vote for them all.
    Where is the equity in that?
    I can't help but wonder what the criteria is for rating someone's blog.
    I'm pretty certain it has nothing to do with sexual prowess.
    (Now that is a word I wondered about as a kid. I thought a prowess was a female prowler.)
    No one has been around to my house to judge my prowess, that I know about anyway. Perhaps I have been prowled without knowing it.
    Now there is a scary thought. Look out your window and see if you can catch site of the dozens of strange looking men lurking in the bushes trying to rate your prowess so they choose how many stars they give your blog. Do they talk to each other? Do they hold town meetings to discuss your blog ratings? Is there an international conspiracy of blog raters?
    It is always possible of course that people just accidentally hit the wrong number of stars when they rated a blog. It's easy to do. Fortunately all you have to do is rate the blog again with the correct number of 5 stars. The system allows you to change your rating, especially if it was too low last time you rated. (Hint hint.)
    I am perplexed about how readers decide on the number of stars they think a blog should get. Is it comparative? What if the last blog rated is better than the blog you rated at 5 earlier? Do you go around and demote your previous ratings? That isn't nice.
    Then of course I think a blog rating can be in recognition of an outstanding revelation of insight into human thought.
    Deep and meaningful clich?s on the state of our individual thoughts can only make the readers' minds bloggle.
    We blog, therefore we live. Avoid the rush rate our blogs now!
    Subliminal message => 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5,
    Even better, start your own blog.
  24. DesDownunder

    Stupidity

    By DesDownunder,

    Hello, hello, is this thing working? I don't know what is wrong but the date for the blog entries are stuck in 2009, there is no 2010. How stupid is that?
    It was the same with my last entry, but I set it for the December 31 2009 and it posted as January 1 2010. How crazy mixed up is that? I wonder what will happen this time?
    I've had a great idea for writing a story. I will write the first paragraph and post it as being December 31 2009. Then when it changes to January 1 2010, I will find that the story has finished itself. Easy.

    Does anyone else have a problem with the way things are proceeding this year? I have a theory that the aliens have let loose with a stupid virus and it is affecting everyone except members of AwesomeDude. So if you want to avoid being stupid, join AwesomeDude Forums right now!
    It also seems that just writing to any of our authors and letting them know you read their stories will also protect you from this dreaded virus. Of course it will, writing to an author is never stupid.
    Speaking of stupid, I have to buy a new DVD polisher/scratch repair machine for the video store, the old one finally stopped working. Chewing gum and rubber bands are no longer sufficient to keep it running.
    I looked at all the machines that are available in OZ, including a locally distributed model from the US. Guess what? The Us one has a timer on the polish fluid tank, so you have to change the polishing fluid when they want you to, and not when you decide it needs changing, just like on some computer printers which force you to change the ink cartridge even when there is plenty of ink still in the tank. Stupid!
    I found another machine, almost identical, slightly cheaper, made in Oz (so it will come with its own supply of rubber bands) and it doesn't time out. Hooray for Oz.
    We are about to enter our annual stupid season here in Adelaide. Between now and March we will have a plethora of Festivals, car and horse races (separate events -we're not that stupid...yet), as well as an election for our state government, when we will be able to elect...(yes you guessed it)... stupid people...to govern us for the next 4 years. I'm not hopeful of anything but a disastrously stupid result.
    Our politicians are no better than anywhere else, all are intent on passing draconian the barbarian type laws to protect us from being stupid, (politicians excepted, no one can cure politicians' stupidity, which explains why they think that passing laws against people being stupid will actually work.)
    It would be far better to pass a law which made stupidity compulsory, then no one would want to do it, (except politicians and middle management types.) Senior executives on the other hand are not stupid you know, they are just wallowing in their ill-gotten gains which the poor people were stupid enough to give them.
    We are already seeing a record number of people standing as candidates for the election. The electorate where I live will almost certain re-elect the sitting religious-extremist left winger. An oxymoron, do I hear you say? No, not really, he is just stupid, dangerously stupid, unfortunately.
    Our left wing party is now more right wing on social issues than the right wing party is. On other issues they haven't a clue, but then neither does the opposition who are just plain, very plainly, stupid, and ugly.
    I think both parties will try their hand at Obama type rhetoric with an Aussie accent, which will be not only stupid, but excruciating to say the least.
    The GLTB will mount a campaign to find out which politicians support gay marriage. That is interesting but a little stupid as the state government cannot override the Ozzie federal marriage law which does not permit same sex marriage even though it grants us the same benefits, and if that sounds stupid to you, you re right, but their Christian beliefs stop them from passing gay marriage laws.
    I conclude with a quote I saw on the Net. Don't these people realise that "Jesus had two dads?"
    I am so glad I am member of AwesomeDude.
    Avoid the stupidity join AwesomeDude Forums, today.
  25. DesDownunder

    First Entry

    By DesDownunder,

    Okay so now I have a blog. What do I do with it?
    I could blog on about lots of stuff but that would bore me and anyone reading it.
    I just want to see what happens for the moment so I'll post this and then get back later with something more...or less, meaningful.

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