Some Pictures

As I'm lacking in words/brainpower at the moment, I'm posting some pictures instead. Words/brainpower expected to come back some time this afternoon hopefully.

In the meantime, here's some photos from my travels thus far.

Sunny days in Czech Republic. And some guy with a cross. Religion is a popular pastime for everyone there. Except statues, they don't do a whole lot. Posers.

The Girl partially obscuring a sunset. The alternative title for this was 'Sun? In England! Quick, grab the camera and take a fucking photo!' Or it could be called 'The Water's Blue, You're Just Colourblind, You Dumbshit.'

The trumpeteer. He also plays saxaphone.

Remnants of ads in the underground. One bit looks like it's part of an old ad for Giant Strangle Hands™

Waterfall. Splash. Or a humourous cut scene to represent a moneyshot in an old movie which would have been preceded by a train going into a tunnel, a rocket taking off and possibly a bottle of champagne being opened.

The excitement of Liverpool St station. It's usually busier than this. Maybe everyone ran away because the building appears to be being held up by pick-up-sticks.

More statues in Czech Republic. Statues are like Jesus to them. Wait, the statues are Jesus? Oh, it's all starting to make sense now.

London. From Southbank at night. Through a foggy lens. Crap.

Everyone's favourite holiday: Sit On An Orange Bench With A Stranger Near A Fuck-Off Spiky Green Bush Day

More with the silhouettes and the contrails. At least there's no statues though. Bet you're relieved.

The whimsical land of The Carnies. PS: It's not Frankston. It's a fair. I even got through this night without being pickpocketed, acquiring a giant panda or winning a shitty prize. What is it with Carnie prizes though? Yes, I got some balls to go in some hoop or something, it was damn hard and all you're giving me is a shitty lunch box from some cartoon that hasn't been on tv since 1995? Fuck you and your Captain Planet lunch box.

A study in cement. LAX is a boring, boring place. Especially when all you want is a fucking sandwich and no one sells food unless you count the beggar who'll give you some gum for a tenner. Which i don't.

Hoisin, bitches!

Most. Boring. Job. Ever. Since when do straps go above your chin? Is that even practical? I say no. I didn't tell him this though as he had a knife on a gun. That's the weapon combination I always choose to not fuck with.

Because everyone associates lions with water. Tie your boat up to a lion holding a ring in its mouth! Poor lion, all green and trapped in a giant brick with nothing to eat except a big circle.

Canary Wharf. On weekdays, home to a specific group of wankers called 'analysts' or 'brokers'. On weekends, home to sweet fuck all, apart from this here bridge and some seagulls. And maybe even some pigeons with arms

Fireworks. Or another cut scene representing some kind of sexual occurrence.

In London this is called an 'adequate measure' when combating a boring street-scape. Blue chairs. Wow. Inspiring. "Hey what you wanna do today? We should totally go down by the river and sit on a blue chair! How awesome would that be?... What do you mean 'no, you're a loser'? "

Don't be alarmed. It's just an installation I saw once. How alarming... No? Umm.. ... Err... They weren't real alarms- it was a collage, so i guess you could call them false alarms?
I don't know any more alarm puns. Ooh, wait: The gallery was such a rip off, we had to pay alarm and a leg to get in.
That is all.

An abandoned mill in a place I used to live. It's pretty abandoned. Is abandoning an antonym of bandoning? For example, 'you can tell it's empty by the lack of people bandoning the area'.

That's it. I have nothing else at the moment.

The one where I am rudely disturbed

Travel documents.
They're important, people!
You should take very good care of your passport and always remember to take it with you if you're travelling abroad.

It's also very handy to have it nearby in day to day situations.

I have an awesome story for you all that I was withholding for a time like now. And by 'a time like now' I mean now that I remembered it.

So let's go back to May 2007.

The Girl and I had just moved into our shitty tiny tiny shoebox fantastic new room in a share house in Hammersmith. The house was made up of about 9 bedrooms over 3 levels. There were no dining/loungerooms and as such no one really knew anyone else in the house. But it was cheaper than living in hostels, so we were happy enough.

It was a Friday morning.

I awoke on this fateful day at the usual time, around 6.30am. Begrudgingly, I slid out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom.
I was enjoying the invigorating properties of hot running water when there was a knock on the bathroom door. I'd been in the shower for 5 mins at the most.
I yelled out with the old 'Yeaap?'
No answer. I shrugged and thought one of my flatmates was being a bit rude, but it didn't bother me.
*Knock knock.*
'Yes, what??' Slightly more aggravated this time.
Still nothing. I was annoyed by the lack of consideration displayed by my flatmates. Whilst pondering the possible need for immediate access to the bathroom ('upset stomach', plaque eradication, morning number ones, follow-through, feminine dramas) there was another knock.
That was the final straw. I jumped out, threw my towel around me and grabbed the door handle.
Boy, was I going to give some shit-words and death-eyes to the impatient person on the other side.
I swung open the door.
Instead of an impatient flatmate, I was greeted by 10 people clad in police uniform, bulletproof vests, walkie talkies and utility belts.
Umm...
Hello.

Oh Hi. We thought we'd drop around and make sure you weren't having long showers.

One guy even had a bandana on. I guessed he probably had a nickname like 'Maverick' or 'Ace' or 'Shooter'.
I thought of all the reasons that my house could be suddenly filled by such people.
Was I living in a crack den? No.
Had I been storing weapons grade plutonium? Don't think so.
Was I an extra in a new Police Academy movie? Nuh.
Was I Jason Bourne? Not that I recall.
Had I punched any old ladies recently? Nuh-uh.
Maybe it was because we'd been neglecting our basil plant and they'd come to take it into foster care? Possibly.

A man whose badge identified him as belonging to UK Immigration very sternly and quickly shouted at me: 'What room are you in? What's your name? Where are you from?
Meanwhile, I'm dripping wet looking around at the SWAT team that has suddenly materialised in our hallway. I try my hardest not to laugh.
'I'm in the front room. My name's Jiminy. I'm from Australia.'
One guy then peered into the bathroom, presumably to see if I was harbouring any illegal immigrants. Once he realised our bathroom was essentially a shoebox filled with porcelain and tiles and that I wasn't trying to help Pablo out a window, he relaxed a bit.
In a perfect twist of fate, to back up my story I was wearing my Australian flag beach towel. (A little too convenient, I bet they thought.) Luckily I'd decided not to wear my 'Unauthorised Border Crossing Convention 07' commemorative bath robe .
Anyways, I got hustled into our room by two of the armed guys. Whilst Maverick and one of his colleagues ran around our house for a while and knocked on doors, some others checked the Girl's and my passport and best of all I thought, jovially stated 'Well you check out, we'll have to arrest someone else!'
Good jokes from the guy with the gun.
They then left as quick as they came, leaving us a receipt of their search warrant and an overwhelming feeling of complete bewilderment. And possibly some hidden surveillance devices.
They piled into two unmarked black vans and took off down the road.
It wasn't until after around ten minutes of The Girl and I staring at each other in silent confusion that we gathered our senses enough to think to look at the warrant receipt. It was a carbon copy that was completely illegible. Oh well.

I laughed for about another half an hour at the sheer absurdity of what had just happened, then went back and finished my shower.

Dawn raids are an awesome way to start a Friday.

So the moral of the story is:

Keep your passport handy at all times because you never know when some gung-ho enforcement agency is going to do a dawn raid on your house, beat on the door, drag you out of your shower, ask you to prove you're not an illegal alien and then disappear into thin air.

I'm full of wisdom.
You people could learn alot.

The SAS, well kind of...

No, I'm not talking bout the Special Air Service. This is something more stealthy and possibly more deadly.
Slimy Ass Slugs.

We have slugs in our house.
Not like pets in a terrarium, but rogue night-slugs that sneak in under the cover of darkness, leave trails on the carpet and then exit before anyone awakes.
There are some reasons this scares me.

1) They 'Know'
In the same way that Scientologists 'Know'. But somehow it's worse than listening to/watching Tom Cruise. The slugs know what time we go to bed and what time we wake. They coordinate their slimy reconnaissance missions whilst we sleep.
That's the bit that chills me. Whilst we sleep...

2) I don't know
I know we have a slugs, but I don't know what they want. Or where they come from or whether their intentions are noble or something altogether more insidious.
There are trails which slide around from behind the stove, into the lounge room, then from there it's hard to tell what their objectives are. There's at least two, maybe three slimy little trails on the carpet. The trails usually come out of the kitchen, go under the dining table and loop around the legs of the chairs maybe two or three times and then arch back around and out behind the stove again. What do they want with our chairs? Do they want to sit down? Can slugs even sit?

3) They eat penis
Yes, that's right. Being hermaphrodites all slugs have both male and female organs. The slugs mating ritual consists of two slugs encircling each other and sperm is 'exchanged through the protruding genitalia'. I imagine this to be kind of like a wet high five. Unfortunately for the slugs, sometimes, the corkscrew-shaped protruding genitalia, which is science-talk for 'wangs' get entangled and the slugs have no other choice but to practice apophallation, which is where one slug chews off the other's penis. How's that for sexy time? Wet high five, followed by having your wang chewed off. Eww and oww.
Not to worry though, because once the penis has been chewed off, the slugs can reproduce using their female genitalia. Hooray! Lady-man-slugs!

4) This:
Oh great. that's just what I need. Hermaphrodite gastropod molluscs with infra-red, motion sensing vision hunting me for sport whilst I sleep. Fuck.
Predator creeped me out when I was a kid. And now I have to relive the horror, albeit in slimy slow motion.

If the slime trails start appearing closer to my room, I'm gonna freak out.

Slimy, stealthy, murderous little bastards.

Weirding out the checkout guy.

Context is an important thing.

Due to yesterday being Valentine's Day, I thought it would be nice to do something for The Girl.
We're not big into buying 8ft plush pandas with heart shaped stomachs that say "Me wuvs you" when you squeeze it's hand or edible fluffy pink underwear that has a flashing LED in the crotchal region.
No, none of that. I decided I'd make Non Blondie a tasty dessert for when she got home from work. I came up with an awesome plan, but alas we didn't have any cream.
Realising the supermarket would be shutting soon, I dashed down the street making it through the doors as the security guard tells me 'Closing in five minutes."
I nodded and ran to the dairy section, grabbed some cream and headed to the checkout.
The guy behind the counter glanced up at me.
By this stage I'm breathing heavily (from the running), possibly looking red faced, desperate and buying only a tub of cream. And it's late on valentine's evening.
The checkout dude smiles cheekily, squints one eye and nods. I read this with complete clarity.
What he's saying is "Ooh yeah, Nice one. Whipped cream. Bit of the ol' in-out hey?"
I just smiled back and left.
I really could have really messed with him and bought a cucumber, some KY, some clothes pegs, a 2 litre tin of olive oil, some rubber gloves and 5 rolls of cling film, but I only had a pound with me.
Also, I only needed some cream to go with the berry coulis and tasty pikelets I'd made.


When i used to work in a supermarket back when I was at high-school, I used to wonder what on earth some people were doing when they'd come in and buy seemingly random unrelated items. It was a fun game to try to work out what they were doing with them.

An apple, a pack of band-aids and some whiskey?
Either the guy you're serving is a shaky, self doubting William Tell or you're dealing with a self-harming, malnourished alcoholic.

A watermelon, a melon baller and some vaseline?
It's either a creepy lonely guy or a fruit-salad making chef with bad chafe.

Doritos, bottle of coke, a bouncy ball, aluminum foil, hundreds & thousands and a tin of peas?
Definitely a stoner. Or Christmas at the orphanage.

Then I realise The Girl and I do the same thing. I found a receipt from the supermarket the other day which was for some salami, two big toblerone bars, washing detergent and custard.

I don't even know...

Ok, so I lied...

... but I couldn't leave without posting this.
This is what I encounter walking home from the station tonight.

Lady walks out of house onto footpath, talking into phone.

"Yeah, I dunno... Hold on!"

Lady is then distracted by small dark shadow in the middle of the road. She walks towards it.

"Hey... Were they leopard print?"

Walks to dark shadow on road, picks up and holds up in the streetlight. It's a rather large pair of ladies knickers.

"Yep! Found 'em!"

I see her smile in the yellow glow of the streetlight as she turns and triumphantly walks back inside.

And that's all it took to make my day.

Goodnight!