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DesDownunder

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Blog Entries posted by DesDownunder

  1. DesDownunder
    So Australia has an election today (Saturday 21st August 2010) and our senate has 42 candidates.
    Our electoral system is a preferential system, so if no candidate gets 50% the vote is allocated to the next person in line on your ballot paper, or something like that. (Hey, I'm Australian and it's our patriotic duty to be apathetic.
    So I have spent all night looking up the policies of each main group of candidates and just to make sure everyone knows I am a left wing anarchist with progressive libertarian tendencies and don't like religion in my politics, I have decided to vote as follows:
    1. The Australian Sex Party.
    2. The Secular Party of Australia
    3. The Socialist Alliance
    4. The Greens.
    The other candidates won't get a shoe-in after that, but just to make sure, I have arranged all the homophobic and Christian influenced parties at the very bottom of my list, with the other right wingnut candidates.
    Of course, most probably tomorrow will bring either a Labor (=US Democrats) or a Liberal (=US Republicans) government, but as both appear to me to beholden to some religious influence and neither will have a thing to do with gay marriage, I am not too worried that my vote is wasted on encouraging the intelligent side of the force.
    If the Borg had put up a candidate we might have been better off by voting them into power, at least they "add the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species to their own" in pursuit of perfection. (-Wiki). I'm sure the Borg would appreciate a fabulously perfect gay techno party or two.
    As it is we will have to tolerate being tortured by the new Inquisition, like the rest of the planet.
    I am so looking forward to being put to the question -not!
    Next election I think I will start an Australian Cynics Party, if I haven't been burned at the stake.
  2. DesDownunder

    Blackout.

    By DesDownunder,

    So we had a storm tonight. It blew over a tree somewhere, and rain was released in a deluge that lasted long enough to dump nearly an inch of water. Lightning lit the sky somewhere over the Antarctic and evidently struck havoc on the power lines to my neighbourhood -right as I was making a post about Windows 7. The computer died and the lights went out. The room was black, cold and very, very dark.
    I couldn't see a thing. I dismissed the idea I had died in a hurry. Perhaps I should rephrase that. I dismissed in a hurry, the idea that I had died.
    Anyway I blindly felt my way around the house till I found the emergency flash-light. Well something had died, the battery. I shook the flash-light and it came to life, sort of, with a weak beam that enabled me to see my way to the phone. The phone had died too. No wait a minute, it was the wireless phone I had picked up, and I realised that it needed mains power to operate. It's handy having been an electrician, we know about these things.
    Stealthily I made my way across the kitchen into the sun room. Sun-room? You have to be joking, it was pitch black outside , the sun light had died hours ago.
    And the overcast skies were too busy crying rain upon the earth. The sun room was as dark as a Mayan tomb in 2012. I pulled back the curtain and peered outside, but all I could see were black silhouettes of trees against a dark grey sky. No lights in the house next door, no street lights, no sign of Man's conquest of the night, nothing.
    What dark and evil place is this planet in its night, without even a star for a friend.
    It was as if I was the last man on Earth. Hurriedly I scampered across the debris of the modern demolition that represented my attempt at interior design. I tried the flash-light again and a weak beam, a little stronger than before searched the room looking for the hard-wired phone, the one I bought at a sale for $5. I found it under a newspaper that was trying to imitate a shroud.
    I lifted the phone and found the dial tone working. I pushed buttons until it rang a number and then I heard the voice of my darling. Quickly I warned him of the impending doom, that 2012 had arrived early, that life as we knew it was over. "What?" he asked. He never takes me seriously unless we are ...well never mind about that, this is not one of those episodes, it has a different climax.
    I warned him that the power was gone and we would have to cuddle to keep warm when he arrived home. "What?" he asked again as if we had never done anything like that during the time we lived in the house where we could actually see each other. "Just drive home carefully," I told him, "the lights are out."
    "er...er," he stammered somewhat quizzically. "The street lights are out, and our power has died," I explained. "Can you bring the spare flash-light home with you please?"
    "Oh, okay. I understand now," he replied, "see you when I get there."
    I told him okay and hung up the phone.
    I slid open the glass door and the strangely growing strength of the the flash-light beam died as it tried to find some life in the back yard other than the deluge from the skies. I grabbed the umbrella by the door and stepped outside. I swept mine eyes across the wilderness of my back yard. So this was what it was like before we discovered fire, oil and electricity. Shadows of trees lit by the moon diffused through rain clouds. How terribly lonely, frightening...lightning lit the sky and it was easy to believe anything. Rain avoided the umbrella and ran down my cheeks, and I cried for what might have been. (Well, I didn't actually, but it sounds good.)
    I was so relieved to see his car drive into the garage, that I ran down and closed the gates. Arm in arm we walked back to the house and sat in our darkened sun room.
    "I'll make coffee," I said.
    "How?" he asked, "There's no power."
    "The gas stove still works," I explained.
    Five minutes later we were sitting romantically, sipping coffee in the dimness of our once brilliantly lit sun room. I could tell he was smiling at me, enjoying the silence of what for all we knew, was the end of times.
    And then the lights came on, the power was back on. Civilisation has returned, we live, we live!
    I rushed in and switched on the computer, Windows 7 quickly booted and Firefox sprung to life with the page I was working on, text still intact. Amazing!
    Okay so what happened to the boyfriend? I cooked his dinner and he watched a movie while I typed this up.
    So I tell you the same as I told him, don't say I don't think of you, even if it isn't the end of the world.

  3. DesDownunder
    I thought I would quote some of my replies I post to newspaper sites and blogs, and stuff.
    Hopefully they will make sense without referencing the article, which I won't do because I do not mean this to be a reference report, just a place to list my comments that perhaps might have a general relevance to other communities or situations. A kind of pin the quote -tail, on the (blindfolded) asinine news of the day, and let it fall where it may in the readers' realm.
    .
  4. DesDownunder

    Life's Journey

    By DesDownunder,

    I wonder if I should blog about all my worries?
    No, I better not, I could start a panic.
    Shall I put on a happy face and pretend that I am gay?
    Is it possible to pretend to be something that you actually are?
    I could pretend to be straight, but I doubt if anyone here would believe me.
    I'm sure I could fool the locals into thinking that I am straight, after all they have fooled themselves into thinking they aren't gay.
    Some of them even went and married a girl to prove it. Seems a bit drastic to me.
    What's worse of course is that in a moment of misguided enthusiasm they managed to get the poor girl pregnant and then a few months later she had to go through that labour intensive procedure of giving birth to the brat.
    Of course the brat turned out to be so cute that everyone oohed and aahed for a couple of weeks until it started to throw up on everybody's shoes.
    Still the child seems to have survived into the toddler stage, you know the one where it wanders around the house looking for somewhere to show its expertise at doing number two. This of course inspired the once house trained cat to remember that it too likes to leave territory markers wherever it goes. The canary in its cage decided to fling its droppings as far it could as well. The dog wasn't a problem. It was too busy licking its nuts.
    Unfortunately, the brat saw the dog and then tried to show the visiting church committee, his impersonation of being a doggy, growling and licking as best he could.
    And that is how the family came to hire an exorcist.
    It was all perfectly understandable. The child showed all the symptoms of possession. It vomited over everyone, it shat everywhere, and it had weird control over the beasts in the house. (When the the brat failed the self lick test, he was found letting the dog do it for him, which of course caused him to laugh with demonic fervour. It didn't help that his grandmother was the one who found the quite excited dog with the boy.)
    So early on a Sunday morning the exorcist arrived in full regalia armed with crucifix and holy water.
    The brat ran and hid in the dog kennel, while the dog stood guard at the entrance, with snarling teeth, saliva foaming and dribbling on to the ground where it solidified into flaming thorns from Hell. (Well not really, but I thought it was a nice image.)
    No one could get the brat to come out of the kennel. The parents left food which the dog took into the child. Some years later, when puberty struck the child with all its power, the boy drove out the demon and left the kennel.
    He immediately went to highschool where he was known as demon-boy, but it was too late. In the kennel he had already worked out that civilisation was f'd, and no amount of indoctrination, er I mean education, could affect the now teenage youth.
    He moved into a cave in the foothills just outside the city limits with the High school star footballer who had fallen in love with him.
    The lads' fathers were aghast, not at the boys, but at each other when they met outside the cave. They too fell instantly in love with each other, but that and their divorces is another story.
    Meanwhile the two youths in the cave were busy practising peace and lovin'.
    All of which goes to show that you don't need Television, the Internet, a fast car, an ipod, an education, or anything else except love, to to find happiness on your life's journey from the kennel to the cave.

  6. 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.
  7. DesDownunder

    Happy New What?

    By DesDownunder,

    Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to have a happy new year when the rest of the world seems to have gone stark raving mad?
    Perhaps it is just me, perhaps I have caught some dreaded mental malady that makes me think the rest of the world is bonkers when it is really me that has gone psycho in January.
    I can tell you I wasn't too happy about Uganda passing laws to execute homosexuals, and my straight friends weren't impressed that if straight people know a gay person, then they have to report them to the Ugandan authorities or face 7 years jail.
    Meanwhile back in Adelaide the government has passed a bill forcing DVD stores who rent or sell R18+ (Restricted classification by the Australian Federal Government) to display the R rated movies in a separate area from all the other DVDs. Note: R18 movies are not porn as such, we have XXX rating for porn which means they are automatically banned and can't be sold or rented to the public in any states, except in Canberra, where the politicians live when Federal parliament is in session.
    Then there is the delightful news that Ireland has passed a blasphemy law, which means if you blaspheme in Ireland you can be fined upto 25,000 Euros (approx. $35,000.)
    I can't sleep and if I do sleep I keep dreaming about straight people being jailed because they know some gays.
    Then I have a nightmare about gay penguins being executed in Uganda, or gay anything being executed anywhere, for that matter, just because they are gay. Haven't we suffered enough for these crackpot zealots thinking they can control nature? Let alone the whole Human Rights issue of being able to love whom you wish. (Consenting adults only please, and only in the designated R-rated section, no XXX stuff, thank you.)
    I am not worried about Ireland so much, the Atheist Ireland group have published a list of 25 blasphemies in the hope of getting arrested. (They are Irish, and I love them for that.)
    I woke up in sweat and almost screaming about the loss of human rights. Am I taking all this too personally, do you think?
    After all I live in Australia and I'm not going to Ireland or Iran or Uganda. It's bad enough having to leave the house and do the weekly shopping. You only have to look at a little old lady and she screams "Help." Heaven help me if I look at her pet dog.
    Well our politicians are making noises again, about a charter of human rights for Australia. The only trouble is they don't see freedom of religion, freedom of speech etc., as a Human Right. The federal Aussie politicians have however announced that from August they will filter the Internet for us. At the same time they have announced a fast cable broadband to be installed in 90% of Australian homes, presumably so we can all watch play school.
    Then there is the local hospital, that needs to be replaced, rebuilt or if the other party gets elected in March they will build a new sports stadium instead and renovate the old hospital. The city of Adelaide council can't work out why the narrowing of the naturally wide city streets has stopped people from coming into the city. Or why the high rents means that no one wants to live in the city.
    Still you don't want to know all this local nonsense, why don't we all have a nice cup of coffee, and sit this year out.
    Happy New Year 2011...Yeah, Right!
  8. DesDownunder

    Serving the Enemy

    By DesDownunder,

    So we have a complaint of too little blogging. I agree we need more blogging.
    I think also, we succumb to the depressing times in which we live and no one feels like writing when they are feeling down.
    On the other hand, what better time to pen a light-hearted look at the misery that surrounds us?
    Like General Custer we are circled by promises of our doom and the arrows of outrageous misfortune to be living in these most irrational new dark ages. If we circle the wagons against the enemy we will never know what we might achieve if we invite them into our midst for coffee and donuts, instead of shooting at them.
    I've actually wondered if you could use a bevy of donuts as some kind of edible condom. Jelly or jam filling would probably be needed to keep them slippery, at least till cream was made available.
    The problem is, after you have eaten the donuts and drank the coffee, what else can you do to cement relations with those who wish to murder you and your loved ones. Hoping that they won't murder your entire family because you gave them a fried cake and a cup of coffee, might possibly be wishful thinking.
    "Donuts," chants the enemy, "Donuts, donuts, now."
    The trouble is we have little flour and coffee left.
    Poised on the mound of hopelessness,
    We look across the plain,
    Seeking in vain,
    The sign of cavalry charging,
    To our rescue,
    With more supplies,
    But they never came,
    So we mix up the last of the flour
    And make the donuts,
    Our enemies require.
    "Make with the donuts,"
    Our enemies yell,
    It seems like they have seen,
    The wisdom of safe eating,
    The donuts we supply,
    And we carefully slide them onto,
    Their upright brave young men,
    Who then consume them,
    With our help.
    For who are we,
    To complain or disagree,
    If coffee and donuts,
    Can save the day,
    Let us feast all night,
    If it will put things right,
    For in the morning,
    The troops will arrive
    And they will have more
    Coffee and flour,
    But again they scream, "Donuts, donuts."
    Alas, our flour is all gone.
    A meeting has been called
    Between their leader and ours,
    Who tries to explain,
    That more flour is on the way.
    "We don't care about that,"
    Says their chief,
    "You slide those ring-shaped cakes onto us and then help eat them, slurping over us, creating great excitement. We just want to know, when are you going to do our nuts?"
    Like all disputes, usually someone has misconstrued what the other side wants, and sometimes it is what we both want.

  9. DesDownunder

    Feeding Desire.

    By DesDownunder,

    Have you ever noticed the seeming preoccupation French movies have with sex and food? Every time a new French movie comes into the video store, we get heaps of questions about if there is food in it? You'll notice no one asks, "Is there sex in it?" Well it's French so of course there is sex in it, seems to be taken for granted. But it's the movies with sex and food that seem to do the best business.
    Now I don't mean to single out the French, but it does seem their movies are the most likely to comply with the sex and food content, although I do think the Italians serve up a fair amount of sex with their noodles. And of course there's the gay movie Eating Out amongst others.
    That brings me to consider the seductive attributes of the texture of many foods. I mean pasta itself is just oozing with slippery morsels writhing in freshly warmed sauces as your utensil swirls them around on the plate. Haven't you ever thought of just grabbing a handful or two of the luscious noodles and rubbing them all over your prime ribs? A kind of alimental pasta.
    For starters of course there is soup du jour, soup of the day, for you uncouth hamburger munchers. What better way to seduce a lover than with a thick cream of celery soup or even potato and leek. Hmm that sounds like a guy I knew several times.
    Anyway I thought I should pass on few culinary hints to assist you all to enjoy the art of food and sex. You see there is more to seduction over a meal than just with a bottle of good wine.
    Each item on the menu should suggest the never-ending possibilities of the debauchery to follow the main course. Think of these tempting dishes.
    Standard oysters au naturel should send the appropriate signals for starters, (If you can get him to dine au naturel, you may be able to forget dinner altogether,) followed by a main course, some of which I mention here:
    Twin Hot dogs in white sauce.
    Roast stuffed chicken or chicken vol-au-vent.
    Rump steak, or T-bones, medium rare.
    Chunky meatloaf surrounded by an array of delicate baby peas, whole miniature carrots and cauliflower smothered in cheese sauce.
    If you manage to serve a desert than you can be reasonably certain that you have either failed as a seductive cook or your dinner companion is as thick as a brick. Not to worry, a double layer cream sponge covered in caramel sauce and decorated with pink icing hearts served with flaming brandy around the edge of the plate, usually sends the right signals, provided it doesn't set the house on fire instead of him.
    Coffee with a flute of French Cognac should serve to make sure that he has to stay the night. Can't have him driving home under the influence, after all you want him under your influence, or you under his. Either way one of you should be grilled lightly until done.
    Of course if you are both so hyped up you can't sleep, you should offer a relaxing massage. Now the best massage oil is sesame oil, the same sesame oil that you used to fry the rice, very sensual and edible.
    In the morning you look at him sleeping there alongside you with only an empty bottle of sesame oil between you. He awakens, he looks at you and wants more. Damn, you've used up all the lubricants you had in the house.
    But wait there is an answer. Breakfast.
    The kitchen is a source of wonders to behold, and so you cook two big bowls of fine-ground oatmeal.
    You serve them in bed and as you do so, you accidentally spill some onto his abs. Quickly you wipe the oatmeal up with your fingers noticing how very slippery freshly cooked oatmeal is...and its warm too...
    What's for lunch? Maybe the guy next door would like to help make a banana sandwich.
    (Please observe all precautions for safe eating.)

  10. DesDownunder

    Finding A Good Movie

    By DesDownunder,

    Ah Winter!
    Yes I have another bout of flu like symptoms. :cough, cough:
    Oh I'm sorry did I spray my nose juice all over you when I sneezed? Let me wipe it off you with this used tissue.
    Really, I am so sick of this bug.
    Another thing I am sick of is the new video rental program we had to buy for the shop. It is preferable to the others we tried, but we still have had to work out what all these extra things are, that it does. Like, tell us how much tax we need to pay and what the cash should be, and how many customers we served. Then there are all the things we want to know but it keeps in secret places for which we have to go hunting. It's like going on a date with a coy slut who knows what you want but makes you take his clothes off.
    The customers are all very patient, which is just as well.
    "Hang on a minute, will you? I have to work out how to work the new software."
    "Oh you poor dear," says the middle aged man with two screaming kids.
    "Daddy, we found a better movie. Can we change it?"
    "Are they too late?" he asks me. Too late for what, I want to ask, abortion? As far as I am concerned the brats are too early for anything worthwhile, as they run screaming from one end of the shop to the other flipping DVD cases onto the floor as they go; and I know yet again, why I never wanted children.
    "To late to change the movie they want for this one?"
    "No, that's fine," I lie with a smile.
    I enter his membership and the DVD numbers and the program wants to know what amount of money he is tendering. I just push F10 to bypass the nonsense, and the transaction is completed. They depart, hopefully to another planet.
    Down the aisle I go to pick up the DVDs the boys knocked to the floor.
    I'm down on the floor when I sense someone is standing alongside. I look up to see a woman who obviously hasn't heard that handbags with matching gloves is a pretension from another century.
    "Are you all right?" she asks.
    "Yes, thank you, just tidying up the stock," I tell her. "Can I help you?
    "I want a movie."
    Why else would she be here? It's going to be a long day.
    "I don't remember the name, but it was very good."
    Yeah, like that is a help. "Do you remember who was in it, or what the story was about?"
    "Oh yes, it had that nice young actor in it with a girl I haven't heard of before, but I heard it was good. It's about a professor in a German university during the 1930s and how he becomes a Nazi."
    "Ah yes, I know that film," I tell her, "Now let me think...Yes Good, it's Good."
    "Yes I was told it was good," she says.
    "That's what it is called, Good," I explain.
    She changes her handbag from one gloved hand to the other. "That's what I said, I was told it was good, with that nice young actor."
    "Viggo Mortensen is his name," I tell her.
    "That's him," she says with surprise, "I really like his performances."
    Good, now we have determined who turns her on, but I don't reveal that I realise this, as it might lead to her describing what she does while watching him in his movies.
    "But what is the movie called?" she inquires,
    "Good, it's called Good," I explain.
    "Yes I told you that it was good." She is somewhat abrupt in her manner, and I realise I will have to either get pleasure from telling her that the movie is beyond the powers of her intellect, or capitulate in such a way that she will release the moths guarding the money in her handbag.
    I decide we need the money, the new software was not cheap. I take the DVD off the shelf and show her the title.
    "Oh it's called, Good," she announces to the multitude.
    "How much is that?" she asks with a voice that has only disdain for the worldly matter of money.
    So I tell her the rental fee, and sure enough she opens her handbag, no moths -they must be asleep; she reaches inside and gives me her membership card and a fifty dollar note.
    A small battle ensues with the software and I give her the change. She sweeps from the store in triumph.
    "I would have smacked her upside of the head. You are very patient," says the cute young gay guy at the counter as he puts his selection of gay movies on the counter. "Are these movies good?" he asks.
    "No sir," I tell him, "Good, just went out."
    And we both burst into laughter.
  11. DesDownunder
    What can you do when you lose your data on your computer? Here is an answer to such a disaster which embarrassingly, befell me recently.
    I was setting up a new computer for my video store when I was overtaken by frustration, fatigue and fear that I would never finish the task.
    So to liven things up, what other excuse could I possibly have, I went to my own computer opened the windows disk manager and deleted what I thought was a left over partition from when I had the Acronis backup software on the system. I didn't like the software so I had uninstalled it. (Oh the irony of it all). What I didn't know was, that the Acronis' dedicated partition had then became part of the partition alongside it, so when I deleted it I deleted all my data as well. All my stories, unfinished manuscripts, essays, tax records, emails, etc., gone~ lost in the bottomless pit of deletion without a warning or confirmation from Windows XP. Thank you very much.
    Slowly the situation dawned on my sentience. To say I felt devastated, even suicidal at the loss of my tax records, not to mention my stories, is to grossly underestimate the trauma I felt washing over me with a trembling uncertainty of real-time terror.
    Not since my first romance broke up had I felt such destabilizing queasiness in the pit of my stomach. I sat looking at the remains of my computer, my lifeline to my ego.
    Fortunately the windows XP operating system was intact being on its own partition. I could even surf the web, though I had none of my bookmarks.
    I rang my computer guru friend who told me he would call in a few hours as he might have a program which could help. I Googled the web for undelete programs. So many choices. So many opportunities to make things worse.
    Shattered, I went to bed. It was 4am and I didn't trust myself to make sensible decisions at that hour, and I knew I had to be careful; mustn't do anything that could overwrite the files that hopefully were still on the drive.
    The following day, having found that it wasn't all a bad dream, I continued looking for undelete programs and after much thought and no sign of the computer guru friend, I decided on a program called Find and Mount, mainly because its name reminded me of my first boyfriend.
    I installed the program and it did indeed find the deleted partition, mounted it, and displayed the results as a read only drive in Windows Explorer. I copied the files to another hard drive I luckily had on hand, and then reformatted the missing partition and copied the files back again. Total restoration of 100gig of data was achieved in just a couple of hours. I cancelled the computer guru, who was happy not to have to come (a first for him) as he had to attend so many idiots that day.
    It would have taken longer to copy the files and folders as the free version of the software only transfers at 500 KB/second, so I paid the not unreasonable $US 43.95 to purchase Partition Find and Mount, which then transferred as fast as the system would allow. To say I was pleased is an understatement. I haven't been so ecstatic since the first boyfriend and I found each other and explored various mounting partitions, er I mean positions, and we didn't even display the results in any windows.
    I need hardly add that I am not associated with the Partition Find and Mount Company except as a happy customer.
    I was also happy with the first boyfriend and he didn't charge, but he decided it was necessary to help as many people as he could find and mount.
    Luckily I can't delete the fond memories I have of him.
    Partition Find and Mount is a very cool program that lets you safely try it out, even use it, if you don't mind the slower speed.
    Highly recommended, like the first boyfriend.
    PS (As for all you people who think I should do a backup, I did that too with the first boyfriend.)
  12. DesDownunder
    So I have been laid up with the flu. Was it Swine Flu? Well it wasn't all that pleasant. I still have a cough, but if it was the swine flu I least had something in common with Harry Potter actor, Rupert Grint. He seems to have got on top of it and I seem to have done the same, though I like the idea that either he or I got on top.
    As I say I still have a cough, but mainly my voice is husky; husky as in hoarse, not as in horse which if I got on top of, might mean I was in the play, Equus, which would be good except that it is too cold here for the nude scene and I wouldn't want to get the flu back. Hmm if I did that might mean I have some kind of horse flu.
    My voice being all husky might also mean I didn't have the swine flu, it might have been dog flu I caught from a husky. No that's being silly, I haven't been near a dog, except for some...no I won't go there.
    I did go to the doctor, who seemed quite surprised I was alive and walking. He listened to my lungs with his stethoscope and asked me to cough. If I could have given him one of my evil smiles I would have, but ever willing to do exactly what the cute doctor wants me to do, I began coughing and hawked up some flying phlegm which did a free fall on to the middle of his desk.
    The doctor just looked at it. "Do you need a specimen?" I asked batting my innocent blue eyes.
    "It's okay," said the doc, "I wanted a new desk, anyway."
    "You could always disinfect it," I told him.
    We both leaned over the table to inspect the 'specimen.'
    He looked at it and announced it was typical and didn't appear to be anything nasty, then he looked at me and asked if I felt okay.
    " I feel great," I said, "It looks like my throat just orgasmed on your desk."
    "Can we skip the description of your afterglow?" he asked.
    "Okay I said, anyway now it's your turn."
    "I think not," he said as he put his stethoscope away, "Come back in a fortnight and we'll see how you are."
    "That's it?" I asked, "Come back in two weeks, what if I have the horse flu?"
    "Horse flu?" he asked and I smiled to myself, I had him where I wanted him and he was going to be the recipient of my pun for the week, when he suddenly announced, "Horse flu is not like bird flu, it won't fly."
    "That's what they said about the pigs before they took off and flew," I triumphantly announced.
    "I don't have time for this," he said and handed me a script.
    "What's this for?" I asked.
    "Pain relief, " he told me, "In case you tell yourself one of your puns."
    The doc likes to get in the last word.
  13. DesDownunder
    As many of you who follow my posts...there are some of you who do follow my posts?
    Anyway as you might know, I am very interested in creativity and the boundaries that copyright imposes on artists.
    I have posted some of these links before but I wanted to bring them together as resource, because I think it is extremely relevant and important.
    These links centre around the work of Professor Lawrence Lessig and his books on freedom of expression in creativity. See his books at this site.
    Addition thoughts from a book reading by Professor Lawrence Lessig who tackles the copyright problem with original insight, can be found here.
    Also see this link for further profound and interesting discussion on creative ideas.
    I think this is very very important.
  14. DesDownunder
    I sneezed.
    So I have been sniffling with an inflamed throat, and headache. I don't think it is swine flu or bird flew, but who knows? I'm not going to the doctor either, because if it is swine flu and he catches it from me then who will I consult if I get the Elbo virus?
    Hmmm wait a minute, that's the Ebola virus. Silly me, my elbow can't get a virus can it? Can it?
    The worst thing about a cold, I'm sure that's all I have, is sitting around waiting until you to feel better so you can then go and feel the bf.
    I suppose I could go and feel someone under 30 and if they start sneezing and die I will know that I have the swine flu.
    I know you can sit and watch TV until you feel better but it just makes me feel worse.
    I'd rather sit and read the stories at AD if I could stop sneezing all over the keyboard. Damn if the bf sees the nasal purge all over the keyboard, he will think I started without him. Well not so much started as finished I suppose I should say.
    kmfghoaslrvzb btt GSGJ,.IODXSxnne454642m-kp
    There, I have cleaned the nose spray off the keyboard. It looks so much better. The keyboard, not my nose.
    I just wrapped the keyboard in plastic cling wrap. That should solve the problems.
    Damn I just sneezed all over the monitor screen.
    I'm going to bed. Hope I don't sneeze all over the sheets.
  15. DesDownunder
    So there I was sitting quietly minding my own business when the phone squawked.
    It didn't ring, it squawked like a duck with the flu. Which flu? How the hell do I know? There are so many hideous diseases getting around and I'm only a poor hypochondriac, not a doctor.
    Speaking of the doctor, I showed him my leg last Tuesday. He said he wasn't impressed.
    "No, no," I told him, "look there," and I pointed at the scaly red mark just below my knee.
    "Is it skin cancer?"
    "Tell me," asked the doctor, "When was the last time your knee was bathed in sunlight?"
    "Hmm that would have been in 1979 at the beach just before sunset."
    "Doesn't count."
    "I was trying to look seductive for the guy in the tight cut off jeans."
    "I don't want to know," said the doc.
    "So it isn't cancer, what about that awful flesh eating disease, or leprosy?" I asked in my most serious whiny voice.
    "It's a slight case of eczema, nothing to worry about. Put this cream on it." He handed me a small sample tube of ointment.
    "This is the same stuff you gave me when I had a chafed dick," I told him.
    "There is nothing wrong with your memory. Yes, it is the same white cream; the one you told me that when you rubbed it into your dick, it came straight out again." He chuckled. "I don't expect you will have that problem with your knee."
    "I do hope not," I said and thanked him as I left.
    **************
    The phone squawked again, bringing me back to the present.
    "Hello?" I answered not really certain whether anyone was actually calling me.
    "Do you want a job?" asked a male voice.
    "A head job?" I inquired.
    "Yeah, right. At least I know I dialled the right number. We need someone to do a shift tonight."
    I was so excited. Someone had taken ill and they needed me to fill in at the cinema where I used to work, and the money would be more than welcome.
    Thirty-six hours later, I am in agony. Every muscle in my body is revolting. Well that isn't really new, my muscles have never been my best feature. I don't remember work being this exhausting. I looked up the operator's handbook I got when I was born and sure enough there on page 547 is the warning about not going back to work after you retire, it will deplete what little energy you have left.
    I laid on the bed breathing...after a fashion. I'd go to the doctor if I felt better.
    If I live long enough I will type this up for my blog as a warning to others.
    As for the phone, it doesn't squawk any more, I unplugged it.

  16. DesDownunder

    Hopeless

    By DesDownunder,

    Pecman posed a (perhaps rhetorical) question in the News and Views Forum on the loss of two young people through suicide.
    I have no argument with Pecman's post, but I did not want to make the following statement in the News and Views Forum because it might be taken that I was chastising Pecman, which I certainly am not. What I do have to say is somewhat a personal statement, but one I would like to share with you from the relative safety of posting it as an opinion in my blog. Of course you may wish to respond, and consider yourself invited to do so. Personal flames will be deleted. Be warned this is not going to be everyone's opinion.
    Pecman's original post is here, and well worth reading. My heart goes out to him for his concern.
    Quote Pecman:
    It is so easy to say, "yes it is," but it is not just the bullying of the young that invites such a response.
    At any moment of our existence, we are in a state of confusion, torn between serving our desire to live loving lives, and fulfilling the social roles imposed on us by our various cultures. Enlightenment can be defined as overcoming one's culture, but that in itself is probably a lifetime occupation.
    Blinded by the pressures to conform, we so often do not see that those demands are challenged by our natural desire for peace and love.
    We allow ourselves to be swayed by all kinds of doctrine to believe that aggression and avarice are the natural states of human existence.
    Those young people, who are exposed to such doctrine, often see no alternative other than to side-step adopting it as their own, by opting out.
    They are not yet able to accept that life is a battle, a quest to affirm goodness; they do not yet have the capacity to withstand the onslaught of those who have been persuaded to preach that love and goodness are illusions and that life is about cruelly taking whatever you want for yourself at the expense of others. They are overcome by the feeling that they cannot and will not participate in the hopelessness, in the horror they perceive around them. This is particularly so in the young people (11 years old in the article.)
    These sensitive souls are the very ones we cannot afford to lose. They are but a few moments of living away from being able to say. "I love life; I will do all that I can to live fully and completely without harming others. I will do all that I can to fulfil my humanity, I say yes to life!"
    But they are deterred from developing this inner-strength of human love, of recognising the power of the goodness of life in themselves, because they have been subjected to, attacked and bullied by, those who have submitted to the doctrines of hate, negativity, guilt and fear.
    These young people are denied their natural inclination to access the discovery of truth and beauty, all in the name of subservience to their culture's rules and beliefs in some kind of external salvation.
    Love is within, it resides within us. It is not given to us, it is what we are, unless it is taken from us; and too often love is forcibly removed from us, by denouncing it as wicked and that it somehow makes us unworthy, immoral and all sorts of other imperfections. We are made to feel guilty for being creatures of love, when in fact we should be rejoicing the goodness of our love and its expression.
    Too often do those, who have submitted to being negative about life, try to force their negativity on others. Too often, love is discriminated against by the forces of fear and guilt. And too often is love strangled in the hands of the bully, just so he feels justified in his denial of accepting his capacity to love. He does not understand it is his own love that he kills.
    But a young person just coming to terms with puberty, mystified by developing emotions, discovering the potential for his own capacity to love, will come to think that in the face of all the hypocrisy which abounds in his culture, of all the tragedy which seems to surround life, in the face of his time and time again being denied his own human existence, that it is just easier to escape from a world in which he feels alienated, which is just too much to bear on his own.
    Sometimes he will find someone his own age to assist their common survival, sometimes lovingly, sometimes not.
    I have at times been asked what a young person gets from a relationship with an older person, because as far as can be seen it seems that only the older person gets something from such a relationship. That may seem true, but only if we consider it in terms of sexual gratification. Certainly there is that horrifying molestation of the young that must rightfully be condemned, but it should not be confused with the transmission of the lust for life that an older person can give a younger.
    Such a relationship can give the younger a model of hope, of what love really is, as opposed to just sexual urges. The love of an older for a younger person recognises the glamour of life (as Oscar Wilde called it) in the younger person, it encourages the celebration of life and it shows love as being the reason for sexual expression, rather than the way far too many people think of it today, as sex being the motivation for love.
    And no this last statement is not an attempt to justify paedophilia. Sexual relationships before puberty is completed, is definitely not part of this argument. Paedophilia is the negative, the abusive aspect of sexual expression between an older and a younger person.
    However, just as destructive is the doctrine of hate which teaches the young and often the very young, to live in fear, with guilt and to deny love by denying the inherent goodness in humanity.
    A loving relationship between an older and a younger person can reverse this hate, this denial of life and replace it with loving goodness and therefore lead the young person to exclaim, yes to life.
    To quote Oscar Wilde from the dock during his first criminal trial:
    [?]It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
    It is important to understand that many people have imposed a non-sexual interpretation on this speech that any student of Greek Love would patently deny. Wilde was quite clearly defending his love of youth as being worthy, both in the intellectual and physical senses.
    Of course, the parallel argument for heterosexual love between a younger person and an older person of opposite sex also holds true, but in practice this has been an instruction in heterosexual sex rather than the noble-minded values described by Wilde. Still I have no doubt the argument is valid regardless of gender. (I also have no doubt that humanity is sexually omnifarious, eventually succumbing to availability and habit, even if influenced by genetic propensity or cultural expectations, which of course cause further problems.)
    Rites of passage through loving relationships of differently aged lovers, is part of the human experience, and I would maintain a necessary one if the young are not to find life as hopeless as it sometimes seems.
    In historic cultures, both civilised and primitive, and in classical literature such relationships were understood and revered. Then came the puritan dark ages which still influence us today and we wonder why we feel hopeless.
  17. DesDownunder
    It's good news.
    Centrelink, the government agency that handles Aussie welfare rang me today and told me that my claim for the age pension has been granted.
    A very nice sympathetic woman told me that I would enjoy a full pension rate until July 1st when my "marriage like" relationship would be recognised and they would then pay me less. (How nice.)
    The lovely lady inspired me with confidence in the system as she informed me that my special senior's card would be posted soon and I would be able to claim concession rates on the phone bill, electricity, driver's licence, water and council rates, etc.
    She then went on to tell me that the government hoped I wouldn't live too long as my pension payment was a drain on the public purse.
    However they would prefer I didn't die just yet as when I do, they will pay my "marriage like" partner a lump sum to help with funeral costs, and as it is reasonable amount, they don't want to have pay it at present as they are running a bit short of funds.
    On the other hand if I would like to do some volunteer work in helping young people become skilled in my line of work, they would be happy to accommodate that. I told her I could show them how to keep being able to have orgasms after 40, but she said there were somethings people had to learn to do for themselves. That's what I meant, I told her, but she said she was referring to my job.
    I explained that my job was now done by computers and that nobody was interested in doing the job properly, she told me I shouldn't let that stop me from having a fruitful relationship with younger people in the community. hmmm.
    I resisted the temptation to ask her if that included showing guys how to use a condom. She did tell me her brother was gay and that was why she was working in the "same-sex marriage like" division of Centrelink. Again I resisted temptation by not asking for her brother's phone number of if he was a top or a bottom.
    She told me if I became ill, that I could go straight to hospital and receive free treatment as soon as the 3 year backlog of patients was cleared up. I had a vision of them sweeping cadavers out of the front gates into the street for collection on Tuesdays. In any case she assured me if it was something serious and I was at death's door, they would have a doctor pull me through as soon as possible.
    She told me too, that there was a home service for meals if I became unable to cook for myself. I told her my grandmother had that service just before she died. That made her laugh out loud, and she replied that the food was better now, even if she would rather starve than eat it.
    Before she ended the phone call she advised me that someone would ring to check up on me, if I lived too long, to see how I was going and if there was anything they could do to help me...presumably to drop dead sooner, rather than later.
    Happily she told me that the new law about people not receiving the age pension until they reached 67 would not apply to me as I was already on the scrap heap.
    Anyway I guess I am now a fully fledged member of that group known as cantankerous, grumpy, dirty old men.
    Perhaps I could get a job as Santa, next Christmas. Ho ho ho.
  18. 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.
  19. DesDownunder
    Announcing: New category in my blog: Deeper thoughts of an Orangutan.
    I am thinking I might like to write some thoughts, essays or viewpoints on various subjects that are perhaps a little abstract, maybe nonsensical or even politically incorrect. I might even write an address to the people of Earth, once I am certain the mother-ship is on the way to pick me and take me home.
    Anyway I have created a category in my blog for subjects that are somewhat more outsopken. If I can ever get time, I may even video them and put them on youtube.
    I also want to see how the Categories system works in the blogs. So we may never get more than this post if I cannot find it again.
    In the mean time think on this:
    If I have a thought today, that affects what I will think tomorrow, why didn't yesterday's thought, about today, have any affect at all?

  20. DesDownunder
    I don't understand all this fuss about a financial crisis. I've been in a financial crisis for over ten years. Every time we use up the limit on the credit we just get the bank to extend the limit. Sexual deficiency is the only real crisis worth worrying about. So far I reckon we have another 12 months before we run out of money again, but wait, I will soon have the pension money coming in and that will have to help.
    So I reckon the banks should extend everyone's credit limit and then we wouldn't have a crisis.
    The girl at our bank thinks the balance on our account is what we have deposited in the bank. She doesn't realise it is what we owe. She smiles at me and says we are doing quite well. (She's not talking about my sex life.) I think she should be put in charge of the International Monetary Fund.
    My health is better lately, but I still have a sleeping problem -he snores.
    So I have to sit up until 5 or 6am when I become tired enough to sleep through the sound of the gale force wind coming from my beloved's nostrils. I'm always surprised that he can grow hair up in those things. His nose hair sways like the palm trees in a tornado.
    Have you ever watched anyone sleep? Fascinating. Definitely an R rated activity after 30. Before 30 of course, it is an X rated biological process. After 40 it becomes more wishful thinking than an activity. And once you get to 50, you can't wait to sleep so you can dream about what it was like when you were under 20. At 60...what was the question again?
    Oh, yes the financial crisis. I wonder if the bank will give me enough credit for the Chinese aphrodisiac herb that lets me think I am 20 while I am awake? It's a great herb. I just wish it affected more than my brain. If you take too much of it it makes you feel like a real dickhead.
    Of course when it comes to one's sexual apparatus, it is true that you must keep using it or you will lose it, what they don't tell you is that after 60 when you use it, you pass out on the bed afterwards. Oh well at least I look like I am sleeping.
    Wake me up when the crisis is over.
  21. DesDownunder
    SO what do you do when you have an embarrassing, cute idea for a story and you just know it is going to be full of clich?s, and breaks a whole pile of rules about writing? Why of course, you go ahead and write it.
    So without further ado, I announce my latest short story Abducted For a Reason for your reading pleasure right here on AwesomeDude.
    Hope you enjoy it.
  22. DesDownunder
    Like all good video stores we have members who insist on showing us how well they can scratch the DVDs.
    I have wondered if the opposition actually pays people to borrow from us and use the discs as Frisbees for the dog.
    Off course it is likely in our rich area (where the shop is, not where we live, we live in the slums on the other side of town; (of course, we are poor white gay males in case you hadn't guessed)), anyway as I was saying, it is likely that these rich folk don't even know what a DVD does, they think it is pretty silver flat plate for serving the hors d'oeuvres, which my father always called "horse doovers," but that is beside the point.
    What led me to thinking this, was the disc that was returned today covered in spaghetti and the remains of either a pizza or someone's stomach contents, or both. The amazing thing was, that after I washed the disc there were no scratches on it -not a one. Perhaps spaghetti vomit is an excellent DVD polisher. Yes? No? Damn, that is going to take quite a bit of research.
    Unlike many stores we don't limit our customers to the nearby suburbs. We rent to anyone from anywhere. We even have a couple of members in the US. They visit Addle-aid every year on business or to see relatives, probably to make sure they are still alive. (It is hard to tell if Adelaidians are alive without actually watching them move about the room.)
    Anyway one of our US members walks in and in that delightful American drawl, announces that he remembered to pack his membership caahd!
    "Ah just had to borrow some more of your Aussie dinkum movies. Did I say that right?" he asks.
    "Not quite," I tell him, "the phrase is, "fair dinkum Aussie," not Aussie dinkum, but it's okay, we get what you mean."
    "Fair dinkum Aussie," he repeats, "Got it!" And he wanders off to make his selection.
    Shortly after and while he is still in the store, another visitor, this time from interstate walks in and wants to know if he can borrow a DVD. I check out his driver's licence and he is from a Sydney suburb. He has that typical golden surfer boy look that is so common in Sydney, and I checkout more than his licence, until his friend (another sun-tanned beauty), yells out to him, "Hey they got fag movies in here."
    Together the two of them descend on the Gay and Lesbian movie section and guffaw loudly at the advertising slicks on the DVD boxes.
    One of our regular customers overhears these two and comes over to the counter and asks me if I would like him to throw the two guys out of the shop.
    I tell him no, because if they keep looking at the Gay films they might ask me if I know anything about them and I can offer to show them in the store room. The customer bursts out laughing, which causes the now unusually large number of foreign looking customers to look at him.
    Suddenly I realise what has happened. It is raining outside and the visitors to the state who have come to see our world famous (yeah right) car race have all decided to get a movie for the night.
    "Do ya have any racing movies?" asks a dark skinned Latin, petrol head from South America.
    "Have you seen Fast and Furious?" I ask him.
    "Is it good?" he wants to know.
    "Sure, I say, "It's just like my sex life." hint, hint.
    "You Aussie peoples are so funny," he answers with a wink. (He winked at me! Yes! and it was all I could do to restrain myself from jumping over the counter and letting him have his way with me, but I restrained myself. I pointed to the action/thrills section which was alongside the gay section still being examined by the two surfer boys from New South Wales.
    There are moments in the life of a video store that brighten the owner's day. The following is one or two of such instances of opportunity that presented themselves.
    A middle aged couple, obviously from out of town because they were of good humour, approached the counter, where the woman asked in a loud clear voice, "Can I join with my husband?"
    I looked over the top of my glasses at her and said just as loudly, "Well we don't usually allow that sort of thing in the store."
    There was a deathly silence for a few seconds until her husband began laughing, the American guy went into hysterical guffaws, only to be joined by everyone else in the store.
    "Oh," said the woman after stopping her own laughter, "I just have to be a member of this store."
    I smiled and said in my most polite voice, "Of course you do, madam." She giggled.
    The two lads fingering through the gay selection were also laughing and chatting with the hot Latin looking guy.
    The Latin guy had decided to watch the Fast and Furious movie, and placed the box on the counter. I got his DVD for him, but when I returned to the counter, the two bronzed surfer types have also placed not one, but two gay movies on the counter.
    The Latin guy tells me he will pay for them all, and the two lads' bronzed faces are blushing red. They leave together to research what I suspect (hope) will be fast and furious international gay relationships. Who knew?
    I just hope they don't scratch the DVDs in the process.
    What a day.
  23. DesDownunder
    It's been an awkward year for me and I hadn't been able to get to the local poetry reading group for about 8 months (I think.)
    Anyway, the stars aligned with Jupiter and the moon was in the seventh house, etc., and I had the night free to attend the local poets reading their poems. Most of them of course read descriptions of 'things' as if they were shopping lists delivered like a telegram, but hey, people were attempting to be creative, so who cares?
    The first shock was that the admission had risen to $5, but the nice girl at the money taking table knocked off a dollar because I looked so old and decrepit.
    I picked up the handout for the evening and was shocked into the middle of next weekend. The group was going to reduce the allotted time for reading from 4 minutes to 3, for each reader, with a promise of looking to go to 2 minutes!
    Okay so they were going to trial 3 minutes in April and May. Well I can tell you there is no may about it, I won't be there. I mean what can you read in 3 minutes? the dinner menu?
    This irked me somewhat, in case you haven't gathered. In one fell swoop they would wipe out reading any of the classic works by Tennyson, Coleridge, Rimbaud (hi Jason), let alone my own unworthy efforts.
    When I complained, I was told I could just read an excerpt. A what? Are these people insane or is their brain missing in action?
    So I sat down and waited my turn to read. I managed to talk to few people during the break, and discovered that the bohemian element had decided to rename Adelaide as 'delayed, because we were always behind what was happening anywhere else in the world. The fact that it has taken so long to think of this is proof that they are right.
    So I questioned people about the proposed reduction in reading time, and was told that people didn't want to stay out till 11pm as it was too late. Too what? Late? Do these people even know that 11 pm is the starting hour for the local gay bar?
    Come to think of it I don't think they have heard about being gay yet, despite my gay poems and a couple of very nice young men skirting around the subject in their poems.
    I watched as people revealed their total lack of knowledge on microphone technique, one man trying to lick it as if it was a black aniseed ice cream, while another woman decided it was in her view of her text and so pushed the microphone away until it fell off its stand. We all got feedback for her effort.
    I finally got to read my Reflections and my All I can Be, poems. I was pleased with very enthusiastic applause, so they are not too bad a bunch of people after all.
    Then I remembered I was in Adelaide and probably the applause was for the previous poet, his applause being delayed.
    I've now had some time to think this over, and I have come to the conclusion that the Church controlled conservative government has decided to use its influence to eradicate the left-wing poets by limiting their reading time at poetry meetings because it won't fund someone to lock up the hall so late at night. The volunteers want to get home early.
    This will mean that there is an opening for a really good poetry group to spring up but as it will take sometime I guess that will be 'delayed too.
    Foo on the lot of them. If they want decent poetry, they will just have to come to AwesomeDude and Codey's World.
  24. DesDownunder
    Slumdog Millionaire has won the Best Picture Oscar and I had to walk out after 20 minutes.
    Why?
    Why did it win, or why did I walk out?
    I can't begin to guess why it won except to reward new wave filming for by-passing tried and proven techniques of movie making.
    Why did I leave the screening?
    Because the handheld camera and sloppy filming interfered with my being able to relate to the image.
    The smart-ass cinematography and editing got in the way of the story for me. And when the hand-held camera did stop moving, the supposedly 'interesting' but really only perfunctory images were framed at an angle that made me feel like I should turn 122 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise in order to comprehend what I was suppose to be looking at.
    My natural view of the world does not tend be obtuse or at an obtuse angle, and I detest having such an obtuse view being imposed on my visual perception.
    To me it would be like trying to read a story with the words all jumbled in a way that destroyed the message of the sentence.
    Imagine the words all at odd angles, scrolling across the page and then suddenly scrolling up or down the page. There are reasons why the early directors and cinematographers spent so much time and effort developing conventions in the medium to communicate to audiences without the medium getting in the way of the story.
    All the time spent, while I was occupied trying to ascertain what the hell I was looking at, slowly ate away at my desire to continue watching.
    I was feeling a headache coming on, with a touch of dizziness, any longer and I would have suffered vertigo and nausea.
    So I left. Reluctantly.
    I say reluctantly, because I really wanted to see and understand what I thought would be an interesting movie. I have seen many Indian movies and know they can do better than this.
    Sadly, I am not able to cope with its form.
    Does anyone else have this problem with these kinds of modern filming techniques?
    I'd be particularly interested to know if any younger people can relate to my experience, but I already have the feeling I have suddenly got old, if not a bit cranky.
  25. DesDownunder
    It's still hot, so is the weather.
    I am devoting my time to my new forthcoming story which I just know is not going to be everyone's cup of tea or coffee or soda. I suppose I could have included beer and wine, but would anyone read my stories while drunk? Would anyone read one of my stories while sober, is probably more to the point.
    But hey, someone has to write this stuff, right?
    I have long tried to avoid writing an "Aussie" story, being more interested in the universal subjects that affects our romantic lives, or ideas of living romantically.
    Yet out of the Australian azure blue sky came a vision to allow me to explore, contemplate, attempt, both, and strike me lucky, perhaps even more.
    Anyway you can all stop brushing up your Shakespeare and start you lessons in Aussie customs and our local cultures, which we try to treat with antibiotics and sterilisation.
    You have plenty of time, as I suspect it will be a few weeks before I complete it and get it edited.
    Of course, I might finish one of the other stories I am working on first. Isn't writing fun?

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