road tripping...

OK, time to revisit the past and tell you a story…it’s a bit long, so please bear with me and don’t moan for me to ‘get on with it’ over the next few posts…


The year was 1983, my parents had just retired and sold the business they ran for twenty years, cashed in their super, bought their first Mercedes Benz and were off to the UK for a month-long vacation.
I was in the last year of Law School, still living at home, looking at forty years of hard-work ahead, had no money and was driving a battered Toyota Celica held together with duct tape.
As I dropped my folks off at the airport in their nice, new Mercedes…I remember Dad saying, ‘Fingers, your car is a mess…through no fault of your own…please feel free to use the Mercedes until we return.’
Dad always maintains he said, ‘Fingers you irresponsible cunt…take the Mercedes straight home, park it, lock it…and do not touch it while we’re away for any fucking reason.’
The exact words he used are still contentious bones even twenty-five years on; whatever they were, I thought they were somewhat vague and ambiguous.
Anyway, at the very least, I was sure Dad wouldn’t mind my borrowing the car for something as sensible as a ‘$20-all-the Cointreau-you-can-drink’ night at ‘Metropolis Nightclub’ in North Sydney, so a few days later I jumped in the Mercedes, drove over there, paid my $20, drank about $100 worth, then at 3am got back in the Mercedes to drive home.
Sadly, in those days I was a serial drink-driver...
*This story is not intended to glorify that practice either; I was a young moron who enjoyed driving cars, drinking and combining the two as often as possible. Thankfully I never injured a single person during the whole stupid phase…a freakishly unlikely piece of good fortune.*
Enough editorial…back to the good stuff…
So, having successfully navigated my way back to the Eastern Suburbs, I was coming out of the Kings Cross tunnel and decided to floor the Mercedes down the hill and see what those clever Germans had put under the bonnet. I estimate I had that fucker up to 140kph as I got to the base of the hill, where the road flattened out into a long stretch, and as I looked up to see where I was going, I noticed the police had set up one of the new ‘Random Breath Test’ (RBT) buses by the roadside. These were quite rare back then, so I had no pre-conceived ideas about what I would ever do if I approached one and was clearly over the legal limit to drive.
The police manning the RBT bus had seen me flying down the hill and had run out into the middle of the road with their fluorescent batons; they were very keen to have me pull over for a chat and a blow in their bag. I, on the other hand didn’t see any upside in that and prepared to ‘run’ their feeble roadblock and disappear into the distance before they could give chase, so I gunned the motor and kept going.
Then as I got about one-hundred metres from the bus and the cops, I chickened out, hit the brakes…a little too hard as it happened…and put the Mercedes into a violent tailspin. The last thing I saw, as the car went through 360 degrees was the panic-stricken cops hurling themselves into the flowerbeds on the median strip which divided the road.
Oh yes…and I saw the big, blue bus with ‘POLICE” painted clearly on the back.
The next few seconds are still a blur, however there was much screeching rubber noise, a lot of spinning motion and I closed my eyes…then a loud bang, a cessation of the spinning…and when I opened my eyes I found I had come to a halt…presumably because the Mercedes was now embedded up to its engine-block in the back of the big, blue bus with ‘POLICE” painted clearly on the back.
As far as I’m aware I am still the only driver in New South Wales to have actually run into a ‘booze-bus’ as we call them here ??
Meanwhile, the cops had climbed out of the flowerbeds and were now running over to the wrecked Mercedes, no doubt anxious to see if I was alright…

*stay tuned…there’s more to follow…*

dummer and dummer...

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old cunt…has anyone seen the list of subjects that made up the 2008 HSC curriculum this year ??
For overseas readers, ‘HSC’ (Higher School Certificate) is the leaving examination for all school students in New South Wales, scores in which go a long way to determining placements in universities and technical colleges.

Let’s start with some of the sillier languages now studied…and the students allowed to ‘study’ these ‘languages’…
Would it surprise anyone to learn that Emineh Shahmoradian topped the state in Armenian, Anke Vermuelen in Dutch, Jaksanwal Kathpal in Hindi, Milan Mitrevski in Macedonian, Saeed Arjomand Bigdeli in Persian, Chrisanthi Karunainathan in Tamil or Thomas Erik Holstrom in Swedish ??
Hmmm…unfair advantage much…
But wait, there’s more…because not only do these presumably native-speakers get a free swing at 2/3 units of education, they’re undoubtedly also eligible to sit for the prestigious ‘English As A Second Language’ course, which is the educational equivalent of the Paralympics or women’s golf.
OK, I don’t want to be accused of bashing foreigners, which most certainly isn’t the intent here…so let’s move onto the meatier courses.
It’s just a shame there isn’t ‘Sort-Of-Maths As An Alternate Means Of Counting To Combat Inherited Stupidity’ or ‘Science For Anyone Whose Religious Beliefs Mean They Prefer Fairy Tales To Difficult Theories and Equations’.
As a taxpayer I’m thrilled to be allowed to subsidize the continued study of Cosmology, Dance, Food Technology, Design and Textiles…to which I’d like added Astrology, Karaoke, Sun-baking, Cigarette-Rolling and Shopping.
There were apparently stiff examinations in Tourism, Personal Development, Hospitality and most importantly Entertainment Industry, all of which were hopefully held in rooms down at ‘Centrelink’ to provide the students/future long-term unemployed with an authentic application-completing experience.
Strangely, important subjects such as Celebrity Trivia, Boganism, Facebook Protocol and SMS Acronyms went untaught this year…

happy birthday to meme...

I know some of you have done that dreary ‘meme’ lately; the one where you write letters to various people and get stuff off your chests. I’m not doing that…BUT…and I know some of the intended recipients are going to be reading this…here is an open letter to some of my friends, who attended a belated birthday lunch in my honour yesterday.



Dear S: When I un-wrapped your gift and bubbled with excitement over it, I assumed from the size of the box and a quick perusal of the front cover that you’d got me the official ‘Scrabble’ CD-ROM. It was only when I got home and opened the box I realized you’d got me a ‘Scrabble’ desk calendar. How thoughtful; like a roll of toilet paper with a joke on each square. I’m so glad I got you an ‘Alessi’ cocktail shaker for your birthday…you cheap cunt.

Dear M & G: Hope you liked the $500 espresso machine I got for your wedding last month ?? Since it’s highly unlikely you’ll be buying me a wedding present any time soon, I guess a beach towel with the colours of the Italian flag on it just about makes us even…you cheap cunts.

Dear A: A bottle of current release wine with no card; I suppose if the grog shop between your place and mine had been closed, I would have missed out completely this year ?? Perhaps I should bring my present over for dinner at your house next week and we can drink it from the ‘Waterford’ crystal wine goblet I got you for your last birthday…you cheap cunt.

Dear T: A voucher…from ‘The Body Shop’ no less. Nothing a man likes more than a $25 gift certificate from a chick’s lotion store. I’m surprised it didn’t come with a card that said ‘Have an average birthday…coz I certainly don’t give a flying fuck about it.’ How’s the deluxe pet carry-case that I got you last year working out ?? You know, the one you’d been wishing for but hadn’t got around to buying yet ?? The one I went and got and delivered…with a ribbon around it…you cheap cunt.

Dear I: I must admit…that was a nice lasagna dish you gave me. I had one, even more magnificent, by ‘Pillivuyt’, until I lent it to you last XMAS and you broke it in half by dropping it on the floor. Since your birthday is later this month, perhaps you should just come round and select a gift from my kitchen. I know you like my German carbon-steel carving knives. Take them; they’re yours. I’ll replace them with a set of Korean self-sharpening blades…you cheap cunt.

Dear N: Since I didn’t get you anything for your birthday this year, I could hardly expect something in return. Fair’s fair. It was very gracious of you to turn up yesterday with no money and allow me to buy you lunch though. I hope you’ll turn up to your own birthday next year with no money and allow me to return the favour by shouting you another meal…you cheap cunt.

Sigh…I think I’m going to wait for the post-XMAS sales in a few weeks and get myself a boxed set of ‘New Friends’. Hell, at 50% off I might even get two boxes…

PS: To everyone who attended yesterday, thanks for coming along. You know I’m just kidding…about everything except your being cheap cunts…

one wedding and a funereal date...

Last Friday I went to a wedding; a wedding so strange I’ll blog about it another day. This post is about the strange date I had last night with the strange chick I met at the strange wedding last Friday.


At the strange wedding, we were seated next to each other during the reception function, which was held in the dining room at The Australian Museum. As soon as this strange chick saw she was sitting next to me, she put her hand excitedly over her mouth and squealed, ‘OMG, it’s you !!!’
You see, twenty minutes earlier, before being seated for dinner at the strange wedding, all the guests had been milling around drinking champagne in a small ante-room off to the side of the dining room. This room contained a collection of small-to-medium, generally unremarkable Australian mammals, in skeletal form, free-standing on slightly-raised plinths. I had been carrying two drinks back from the bar, wearing my splendid black-tie best, when I clipped an unseen plinth, stumbled…and went ass-over-glass into an Australian fur seal, bringing the entire collection of bones down around me.
Anyway, after recognizing me as the strange boy responsible for dismantling the fur seal, the strange chick and I spent a lovely evening chatting…at the end of which we arranged to have a more intimate dinner on Sunday night.
So, last night we met at a very trendy new wine bar in Surry Hills, which considering how well things had gone at the strange wedding, should have been nothing more than a formality prior to my taking her home and dismantling her fur seal…so to speak.
Except that it didn’t turn out that way at all.
About thirty minutes into the date, I asked the strange chick ‘where she was from’, because although her accent was obviously Australian, her appearance was decidedly Oriental, with perhaps a touch of something else. Never mind that this blend of features is just about my favourite anyway, I simply wanted to enquire as to her ethnic origins. A very close girl friend of mine, whom I dated briefly in Tokyo before settling for a long term friendship instead, once confided that enduring a first date with me was like being ‘Clarissa Starling’ to ‘Dr Hannibal Lechter’ in their initial prison conversation from ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.
In hindsight, I wish to fuck I’d asked her what her star sign was now.
'What do you mean “where am I from”…,’ she snapped back.
‘I just mean what’s your…er…um…lineage…you know…’
‘I’m a fucking Australian, just like you…born and bred here, mate.’
‘Yes, I can see that (I couldn’t actually)…but obviously I wasn’t referring to your place of birth as much as I was asking about your ancestry.’
‘Well, if you must know…my father was American and my mother was Indonesian…’
And then it came to me…perhaps the most devastatingly clever line ever delivered on a date anywhere in human history, although I won’t take credit for its invention, because I heard the joke many years ago…but I’d guarantee no one has ever had the opportunity to deliver it, unforced, in a social situation such as this.
‘So, I guess that makes you an Amnesian…’
At this point I fully expected her to sweep the food and wine off the table, climb on top of it, hike her skirt up round her ears, lay back and spread her charms before me like an Amnesian banquet.
Except that it didn’t turn out that way at all.

*crickets*

*huge ferris-wheel-sized tumbleweeds*

‘What??’
‘It’s a joke…you know…because your father is American and….’
‘Yes, I see what you’re getting at…but I don’t think it’s very amusing at all.’
‘Oh, come on…it’s pretty amusing.’
‘Well, not to me.’

Sensing that the situation was rapidly spiraling out of control, I went for the Hail Mary play.
‘Well could you at least pretend to be an Amnesian and forget this whole conversation ever happened??’
At last she smiled; it was then I knew my strange-boyish good-humour had finally broken through the impenetrable force-field the strange chick from the strange wedding had spent the last two minutes erecting. The food and wine was about to go flying. It was climbing time, hiking time, laying, spreading and banqueting time…
Except that it didn’t turn out that way at all.
Still smiling…
‘I think I’d like to go home now.’
‘Yes, that’s probably a good idea…’

Some days I wish I was a fucking Amnesian…

sheiks on a plane...

I don’t care how cool you think you are.
I don’t care how tolerant of different cultures you think you are.
I don’t care how well-travelled you think you are.
I don’t care how stone-cold tough you think you are.

I defy any of you to tell me you wouldn’t get a just a little nervous on an airplane if three young men of distinctly Middle-Eastern appearance, dressed almost identically, with no carry-on luggage, suddenly appeared at the cabin door, came steaming down the aisle and took the vacant seats next to you.
I nearly shat myself...

My parents…wizened old ‘Fourbies’ that they be…choose to fly ‘Emirates’ when returning to the UK for holidays on The British Riviera. Their rationale being that terrorists will never attack one of their own carriers, they are quite relaxed about the idea of being the only Yids on a plane full of camel-jockeys.
Can’t fault the thought-process there.
However, when returning to Sydney, passengers on ‘Emirates’ are shuffled down to Exit 4, to be mixed in with the assorted ‘sleeper cells’ arriving on ‘Iraqi Air’, ‘United Afghan’ and ‘Express Libya’.
This makes it most uncomfortable when I’m summoned to collect Ma/Pa Fingers, standing there amongst the thousands of other relatives, the only White Infidel in a sea of True Believers. I find all those beards and moustaches just a little confronting to be honest. Then again Arab men can be scary as well.
And Allah-forbid, an inbound flight has its’ scheduled arrival time put back even just five minutes and the whole pack starts moaning and wailing as one…

mommy's boy...

Twenty-eight years ago, at the age of seventy-five, my grandfather contracted cancer. Not a particularly aggressive form of the disease, but a rather average, creeping version which took nearly five years to rob him of his fine physique, sharp wit and personal dignity before killing him.

There was collateral damage too: my grandmother, in perfect health when Papa initially got sick, was by his side for those five long years, slowly descending into a depression-related madness that saw her eventually moved to The Loony Bin after he passed away.
Charming stuff !!!
I guess that’s the deal with cancer; it’s not really a capricious disease that carefully chooses its victims. It’s more of an unlucky-dip…and my poor grandparents managed to draw two short sticks.
Nana died not long after Papa, a small mercy to be sure, and at her funeral my mother, knowing how close I was to them, came up to give me a pep talk.
Now, Mom isn’t really a ‘glass-half-full’ person.
Nor is she a ‘glass-half-empty’ person.
She’s more of a ‘hope-I-don’t-cut-my-lip-on the glass’ sort of person.
So, at Nana’s service, Mom told me that when she got to seventy-five years of age, I was to put her out of her misery in a humane fashion, so that she would not suffer the same fate as her parents, or become a burden to her family.
‘OK, sure thing, Mom…it would be my pleasure…and thanks for making a difficult day just that bit easier.’
‘No, I mean it. I don’t want to die like that.’
‘Um, what about if you’re in good health?’
‘No, seventy-five is a good age. No point waiting for shit to happen.’
‘I see…well can Dad do it? As far as I’m aware it’s still illegal to murder your mother, despite her request that you do so, and I’d rather not spend my last thirty years in jail for doing you a favour.’
‘No, your father will be eighty by then and probably incapable of doing up his own fly…besides that he never does anything I ask him to do. Please promise me you’ll do this for me.
‘Yes…OK…I promise.’

Well, guess what?
It’s Mom’s seventy-fifth birthday tomorrow.
She’s in perfect health, despite smoking a packet of cigarettes a day, lives in a nice big house with a large wad of cash, has three grandchildren (courtesy of my lovely sister and her cunt of a husband) and is generally about as contented as I’ve ever known her to be. The only thing that would make her even happier would be for the apple of her eye (that would be me) to meet a wonderful chick, get married and have babies.
Well, since that’s not looking likely at this stage, as a dutiful, loving son, I suppose the sweetest thing I can do for my dear old Mom is to keep the promise I made to her all those years ago.
So, Mom…here’s wishing you a HAPPY BIRTHDAY for tomorrow…I’m off to the bedding shop to get the fluffiest pillow money can buy and I’m coming over to see you just after lunch…

xxx

i said i wouldn't but...

This very expensive holiday has turned into a complete nightmare, so I thought I'd cheer you lot up by showing how even the best laid plans of mice and assholes go astray...


When I booked this dump, the webpage stated that there were uninterrupted views of the ocean from the living room, yet clearly that dead tree in the middle has completely ruined everything. I'm so fucking upset. Where's my chainsaw...



If I stand over here, I've found that the I can block the dead tree out but now that shitty column is in the way. Fuckety, fuck, fuck fuck...I can't take a trick...




My bedroom is a huge disappointment too. The view is bearable but as you can plainly see, some of those window louvres aren't perfectly parallel. Why does this shit always happen to me...




Oh, and the tennis court I was promised is being re-surfaced, so they gave me this bullshit pool table next to the glass-walled swimming pool. Yeah like that's going to make up for it...




But worst of all, I can't find the fucking ice-bucket anywhere and it's really hot out on the spa deck. Every time I want another glass of Krug, I have to ring this stupid little bell and wait for Miguel the cabana boy to get the bottle from the fridge and ride down on the baby elephant with it. It sucks...

don't fuck with uncle fingers...

Every now and then something happens that restores my faith in the way things are supposed to be.




In early 2000, I met a wonderful chick named Carolyn; drop-dead gorgeous, funny, intelligent, independent, a senior legal secretary in a top firm, she drank, smoked, did recreational drugs and performed gymnastically improbable acts in bed. We dated fiercely for six months, during which time Carolyn brought much-needed light into what was an exceedingly dark period of my life. I had seen fit to leave the money market and open a Japanese restaurant, a decision that in retrospect made less commercial sense than ‘Kitty’ opening a nuclear power plant. Given that I had zero experience in the hospitality industry and even less interest in actually being hospitable to anyone, it was inevitable that this diabolically stupid idea failed…which it did…in just over nine months…leaving me stone broke.
One afternoon during the last tortured weeks of my restaurant’s life, Carolyn came breezing into the place as she usually did, putting a smile on my face as she always did. Whatever else that was going wrong in my life, as long as I had the pleasure of this beautiful girl’s company, I felt like the luckiest man on earth.
‘Hi Fingers, I just wanted you to hear it from me first…I’m going up to Gove in the Northern Territory, to live on an Aboriginal reserve and work with disabled indigenous people.’
‘Why?’ I asked, assuming it was a wind-up.
‘I need to discover myself,’ she replied with a cliché so well worn that I knew it had to be a wind-up now.
‘I see…and when are you planning to go?’ I ventured, going along with the gag.
‘Tomorrow at 3pm.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Three years, maybe longer.’
I was secretly beaming at Carolyn’s straight-faced delivery; this was a very good gag.
‘So, you’re leaving me to go and live in Cuntsville, in forty-degree heat, in a tin shack, with the flies and the crocodiles?’
‘I guess.’
‘I love you so much, baby. Thanks for the laugh.’
‘I love you too, baby. You’re welcome.’
The next day while I was at work, Carolyn flew off to Gove…

The next twelve months formed a part of my life for which I intend getting a refund some day…

Although I never saw Carolyn again, never spoke to Carolyn again, I learned through mutual friends that ‘The Self Discovery Choo Choo’ ran off the rails during that same twelve months and that she had developed a rather nasty ‘speed’ habit, which she funded by vending the comfort of her orifices to passing truckies, presumably while listening to ‘Yothu Yindi’ or ‘Goanna’ on her IPod (eh, Kate?).
Sweet !!!
Now, I never wished Carolyn any harm, however by the same token, I’m not too proud to admit I’d have been a little put out had she won ‘Powerball’ or gone on to meet some minor European Crown Prince, marry him and live in the family castle. Anyway, seven years went by, during which time I rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of my own stupidity, never giving Carolyn more than a passing thought…until now.
An old mate of mine rang last night, out of the blue…and after swapping small talk for several minutes, he said ‘Hey, I ran into your ex-chick last week.’
‘Which chick?’
‘Carolyn.’
‘Fuck, no way…where is she these days?’
‘She’s back in Sydney…even has her own web page, just like you. There’s an e-address hyper-linked, in case you want to contact her. Would you like the URL?’
‘Yeah sure…why not.’
And so he gave me Carolyn’s URL: my chick
Yes, that’s my darling Carolyn, aka Kimberley !!!
She’s looking pretty fabulous too, now aged twenty-seven, even though she was thirty-three when we were going out. What’s more to the point, as well as having a nice, steady job again, I noticed from her bio that she is finally getting to work with a lot of disabled people.
And let me tell you, if memory serves me correctly, they must be some of the happiest gimps in the whole world…

and roger federer's a boring cunt too..

I hate the fucking Swiss !!!
I hate that despite their convenient sense of neutrality, the way they look you in the eye and say, ‘No, no…during the war we made cow bells, cuckoo clocks and chocolates,’ when in fact they were allowing Nazi train-convoys to reverse into their cavernous bank vaults and disgorge a mountain of gold fillings, plundered directly from the teeth of their unfortunate, former- European owners, that they can’t see they’re nothing but Germans minus the attitude, nuts and sense of responsibility.
I hate that despite not currently having a standing army, nor having been at war for the two-hundred years since Napoleon kicked its strudel-making ass, Switzerland still claims to manufacture the best ‘Army Knife’ in the world. Ha !!! No wonder it was amongst the last countries in history ever conquered by the French. I can just imagine the great Swiss military geniuses of their day devising a trap to lure ‘The Little Emperor’ into a mountain pass then obliterate his forces with a withering barrage of corkscrews, nail-files, toothpicks and Allen keys. ‘Yeah fucker…and if you survive the onslaught, there’s a bunch of us armed with Phillips-Head screwdrivers, tweezers and retractable soup-spoons behind that...’
I hate that despite being land-locked, never having had a navy of any description, nor a sea-faring adventurer of any note, this boring collection of professional yodelers somehow managed to win ‘The America’s Cup’, thereby proving what a simple thing it should have been to do so in the first place.
I hate that the Swiss convinced me to pay two-grand for a genuine ‘Tag Heuer’ watch that keeps no better time than a fake one costing ten bucks…but what I really hate most about those filthy cheese-fonduers…is that despite the admittedly infinitesimal possibility that by doing so they might unwittingly have caused the end of the universe, they took a chance anyway and switched on their ‘Large Hadron Collider’ without asking me first…

and it came to pass...

And ‘The Brain’ destroyed the E-Type Jag and the 600 Mercedes. He caused The Great Flood then commanded the waters to recede (taking the carpets with them). He smote all the creatures in His Father’s House, par-boiling the fish and slow-roasting the canaries. He cast His Father’s Wine upon His Father’s Stereo and made His Father’s China Hutch bend and break according to His Will.
And behold ‘The Brain’ saw what he had done…AND IT WAS NOT GOOD.
Not fucking good at all…

“Do you think we can fix all this before ‘Scary Bob’ gets home?” asked ‘The Brain’, not well known for his use of rhetoric.
“Well, it’s Sunday today…tomorrow is XMAS Eve, Tuesday is XMAS Day, Wednesday is Boxing Day…and your folks are due home on Thursday…so I’d say you have more chance of getting a blowjob from Jesus,” I offered by way of a reality-check.
“I wonder if ‘Scary Bob’ will see the funny side of all this?” ventured ‘The Brain’.
‘Scary Bob’ was even less well known for his use of humour than ‘The Brain’ was for his use rhetoric.
What followed was a short, earnest conversation about what it meant to be a man. We reminisced about the good times we’d had as kids, as teenagers, the absence of responsibility and lack of accountability…but that at some point as young men we had to accept there were consequences that accompanied certain actions, that young men sometimes did foolish things, but that real men stood up and said “Yes, I did that…I am to blame…and I will make amends.”
It was the first and only meaningful discussion I’ve ever had with ‘The Brain’, who then went to the wall-safe hidden in his parent’s walk-in closet, removed two-thousand dollars and fled by bus to Queensland, where he lived on a barge for the next three years beyond the reach of ‘Scary Bob’.
I haven’t seen a lot of ‘The Brain’ in the intervening years; he went his way and I went mine. We’d run into each other at landmark events such as 30ths and 40ths, weddings and the occasional funeral, but we were never as close again as we were that glorious summer. ‘Scary Bob’ eventually forgave ‘The Brain’ for his sins; even re-hired him with a view to grooming him for the top job at ‘BHC Ltd’.
However ‘The Brain’ chose to walk his own path in life, turning his back on a career in construction management to take up a lucrative position in the methamphetamine-distribution game and doing very nicely until he started using his own product and poking his supplier’s Columbian girlfriend and was chased at gunpoint down his home street in Bondi Junction.
He’s now forty-seven years old and lives in Perth.
Last year he married that Columbian girl; she is half his age and already has two children half her age from her previous relationship, which ended abruptly after her boyfriend was given a ten-year jail sentence for dealing drugs.
I went over for the wedding…
‘The Brain’ looked trim, taut and terrific, his new wife was utterly gorgeous and a really lovely, intelligent young woman, the kids were very friendly and beautifully behaved. Together ‘The Brain’ and ‘Mrs Brain’ run their own small construction/renovation business, which is doing well…and he’s happier than most people I know.
I bet you judgemental cunts didn’t see that coming…

PS…as a wedding present, ‘Scary Bob’ gave ‘The Brain’ a complete dental restoration to repair the damage done to his teeth by the crystal meth addiction. His new teeth are about three sizes too big for his mouth, so he now looks a bit like Dick Emery’s priest character when he smiles. I’d post a wedding photo as proof…but even ‘The Brain’ is entitled to his privacy…

the olympic shames...

There are some really, really, terrible sports in The Olympic Games. And by that I don't simply mean the womens' events (although it's what I'm secretly thinking, byatches).


'Citius, Altius, Fortius'...'Faster, Higher, Stronger', that's what the games were meant to be about. Running places quickly, jumping over things, lifting huge objects, throwing stuff a long way; like you'd do in battle. Like they teach you in Man School.
So, with this in mind, I'd like the IOC to stick the following 'sports' up its collective ass.

Table-Tennis: This is not a sport. At best it's something you do in a friend's basement, beneath a single, bare bulb, with a beer fridge handy. This definition also applies to reading porn magazines, which I'd prefer to do rather than play/watch table-tennis anyway.

Synchronised Swimming: This ridiculous drivel has no obvious point other than the requirement that the contestants do it in perfect harmony. It is the underwater equivalent of two people rubbing their heads and tickling their tummies in identical fashion. Besides, there is no place in sport for any activity that demands the use of nose-clips.

Diving: This is a complete wank-fest; like a cocky-walking competition. Who gives a flying fuck about all the twists and rolls ?? The point of diving is to get from a high platform into the water safely. The only way I'd watch diving is if they reduced the landing area to 1 square metre of pool water and gradually raised the height of the platform until people started missing.

Walking: I don't care how difficult this is...it's silly and undignified, with all the competitve drama of a 'quiet-shouting' contest.

Artistic/Rythmic Gymnastics: This is nothing more than an Olympic version of 'Dancing With The Stars'. Gymnasts in lycra, wearing mascara, adhesive sparkles and fingernails painted to resemble the flag are not athletes. And the women are even worse. Anyway, once judges get involved in an objective manner, the whole spectacle becomes less of a sport and more of an art. Besides which I'm sick of having to 'wait and see whether there are any deductions' for infractions beyond the understanding of the casual observer. Tell you what: fuck the protective mats off and replace them with sharpened spikes. That would get the little cunts concentrating a bit harder AND solve the problem of how to score errors.

Softball: Get fucked. What next; Nerfball ?? Pitty-pat boxing ?? Towel-folding ??

Beach Volleyball: For chicks only...and not unless they get naked !!!

Synchronised Diving:The double-whammy combining all the gayness of diving with the sheer pointlessness of synchronicity in sport. It's just a matter of time before the ultimate joke of Synchronised Rythmic Gymnastics is played on us.

BMX: OK, I tried really hard to embrace this as a sport. I love cycling, so the idea of pedal-powered rallycross didn't offend any Olympic sensibilities, however I've now had a re-think. From the sight of grown men riding kiddies bikes, as though they're in Clown School or something, to the thought of medal-winners being interviewed and claiming to be 'stoked', this sport has no dignity. And if they want to find out which riders are on drugs, forget expensive blood tests...just give them a jar of peanut butter and see which ones eat it with their fingers.

Dressage: This 'athletics' abomination is less of a sport than it is a finishing-school core-subject. Why not just give them all big bowls of soup, a spoon and a napkin...then award the medal to whoever can get the most soup out the bowl and into their mouths, with points deducted for bowl residue, napkin stains and slurpy noises...

More 'sports' to be excluded shortly...

coincidence...i think not...

It was during my exhaustive research on the Jeanne Calment post that I noticed something strange going on…
‘Queen Jeanne’ had reigned supreme as the world’s oldest person from 14th February 1991 until her death on 4th August 1997, almost six-and-a-half years, before passing the torch to Marie-Louise Meilleur, a spritely 116-year-old nearly six years her junior.
Meilleur, from Ontario, Canada was at that time still playing in goal for ‘The Guelph Gryphons’, an all-women, semi-professional ice-hockey team, had recently represented her country at the 1994 Winter Olympics in giant slalom, yet on becoming the World’s Oldest Person (WOP) she was dead inside nine months, after the grand piano she was carrying upstairs allegedly fell on her.
Her successor as WOP, Sarah Knauss, aged 117 from Pennsylvania, USA, former personal assistant to President James Buchanan, lasted just eighteen months as titleholder before she was struck down and killed by a startled white-tail-deer during a 50 km bushwalk.
This left Eva Morris of Staffordshire, England, a paltry 114 years of age, as the WOP and she was expected to remain in office for at least a decade. Within twelve months however, Eva was gone, her vital organs apparently sucked out while she was sitting naked over a drain in her Jacuzzi.
Following Eva Morris as WOP were these unfortunate really old cunts:
Marie Bremont, France, aged 114, WOP for seven months before dying of water intoxication while trying to win a ‘Wii console’ in a local radio station's ‘Hold Your Wee for a Wii’ contest, which involved drinking large quantities of water without urinating.
Maude Farris-Luse, USA, aged 114, WOP for nine months, said to have fallen to her death after she threw herself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Michigan Met Life Building in order to prove the glass was unbreakable.
Kamato Hongo, Japan, aged 114, WOP for eighteen months, killed when the helicopter she was piloting stalled and crashed into the Siumida River. Startlingly, this was the second helicopter crash she had been involved in that year.
Mitoyo Kawate, also Japan, also aged 114, WOP for a mere two months, thought to have died from severe poisoning when she ate four fugu (also known as pufferfish or blowfish) livers in twelve minutes for a bet The liver is considered one of the most poisonous parts of the fish, but Kawate claimed to be immune to the poison. The fugu chef felt he could not refuse Kawate, for fear of losing face…but ironically lost his license as a fugu chef instead.
Ramona Trinidad Iglesias-Jordan, Peurto Rico, aged 114, WOP for six short months, supposedly died of smallpox ten months after the disease was eradicated in the wild, when a researcher at the laboratory she worked at accidentally released the virus into the air-conditioning unit of the building. She is believed to be the last smallpox fatality in history.
María Capovilla, Equador, aged 114, WOP for twenty-six months, believed to have solicited a man via the Internet to torture, kill and eat her for the purpose of sexual gratification.
Elizabeth Bolden, US, aged 116, WOP for less than four months, who according to official court transcripts was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by the crew of a commercial aircraft after attempting to storm the cockpit in a failed hijack bid.
Emiliano Mercado del Toro, Puerto Rico, aged 115, the only male WOP in the last 100 years, who legend has it died laughing while watching the Spanish-subtitled ‘Kung Fu Kapers’ episode of ‘The Goodies’, featuring a Scotsman in a kilt battling a vicious black pudding with his bagpipes.
Emma Tillman, USA, aged 114, spent just FOUR DAYS as WOP, before insurance investigators say she climbed into a storage rack at the Ford Motor Company’s Flat Rock casting plant to retrieve a part because the parts-retrieval robot had malfunctioned, when suddenly the robot reactivated and slammed its arm into Tillman’s head, killing her instantly.
Yone Minagawa, Japan, aged 114, seven moths as WOP, famously killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise onto her head (attempting to crack open the shell) after mistaking it for a rock…

My point: I find it hard to believe that all these people, after managing to live well into their hundreds, don’t seem to last terribly long after becoming the World’s Oldest Person.
I think there is a serial killer, a crazed madman perhaps, systematically offing these really old cunts. If I were Edna Parker, currently aged 116 of Illinois, USA...I'd be afraid.
Very, very afraid...

a special investigation...

The recent passing of the world’s oldest blogger prompted a little research on my part into the question of human longevity, which eventually led me to a Wikipedia entry on the subject of super-centenarians. Or as they are sometimes known: really old cunts (ROC).

The most famous ROC was the legendary Jeanne Calment (pictured), a French woman who attained the incredible age of 122 years 164 days, before her untimely demise in 1997. I say untimely because if you look at her biography, it suggested she may have become the first human being to reach two-hundred.
For instance, in 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal, common in France, to sell her condominium apartment ‘en viager’ to lawyer François Raffray. Monsieur Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay her a monthly sum until she died, an agreement sometimes called a ‘reverse mortgage’. At the time of the deal, the value of the apartment was equal to ten years of payments. Calment lived more than thirty additional years, saying: “Best fun I’ve ever had watching that smart-prick lawyer shithead twist in the wind.”
In 1985, then living on her own at spritely the age of 110, Calment was moved into a nursing home after burning down the house while attempting to spot-weld a leaking water-pipe, claiming: “Fucked if I’ll pay some ass-raping plumber to come and fix such a small, pissy job.”
At the age of 114, making her the oldest actress ever to appear on screen, she starred in the 1990 film ‘Vincent and Me’ as herself, uttering the immortal line: “If you try and feel me up again Van Gogh, I’ll cut more than just your fucking ear off, you hideous, misshapen orangutan.”
Calment smoked until she was 117, quit, and then picked up the habit again at 118 years of age, telling her 80 year old physician: "Once you've lived as long as me, then you can tell me to give up cigarettes, you know-it-all cunt.”
Aged 120, she released a rap CD entitled ‘Time's Mistress’, attending the Grammys and getting into a scuffle on the red carpet with ‘Fifty Cents’, about whom she said, ‘Fifty fucking cents ??I wouldn’t give you five centimes for that crap-filled jungle bunny.’

Alas, poor Jeanne, the feisty little ball of gristle who looked as though she’d fallen of a charm bracelet, passed away in 1997, cut down in the prime of her life at 122 and a half years of age.
They say it was ‘natural causes’…but I think you’ll see (in my next spine-chilling post), there is more to this mystery than meets the eye…

beware the green eyed blogger...

I never really post entries concerning my love-life unless they involve incidents from the distant past. It’s never been my policy to chronicle a potential romance in real-time, on the net, in full view of my doting readers. Then again, it happens so rarely these days that it’s hardly a policy which needs to be set in stone…
Nevertheless, since I recently (and publicly) alluded to the fact that I’m currently hunting ‘The Elephant’, it seems more than a mere coincidence that I’ve begun receiving unsolicited relationship advice from complete strangers via e-mail. It seems as though some of my adoring fans are just a wee bit jealous…

‘Dear Fingers, do you know this woman (web link attached)? She lives in your neighborhood. She is much prettier than your girlfriend. You can talk to her and maybe she will agree to go on a date with you. I went with her last Saturday and it was lots of fun! Highly recommended!’ This terrific review apparently comes from Erin Mercy, however I think I recognize Kitty’s bisexual MO when I see it.

‘Dear Fingers, put your left hand and a tissue together. Send your girlfriend away for the night and check this out (web link attached).’ A generous offer supposedly from Carol Arnold, which as everybody knows is Sparsely Kate’s real name.

‘Dear Fingers, I came across you on Classmates.com. How have you been? I am awesome. I work for a video company these days and I am featured in many films on this site (web link attached).’ Nice try Marianne Bolger, but I went to an all-boy school. Besides, the whole e-stalking/movie-making scenario gives you away totally, Travistee.

‘Dear Fingers, so you thought you’d seen it all!? Don't be so positive! Your new girlfriend happened to get into another sex scandal yesterday. This one will exceed everything she’s done before. Here are some photos (web link attached).’ Esther Marcus is the super-sleuth responsible for this damning report but there’s only one woman evil enough to post other people’s photos on a website…eh Kylie.

‘Dear Fingers, do not leave your lady on a farm lonesome. She can replace you with beasts and you will be way out of the competition for the rest of your life. I learned it the hard way (web link attached).’ This ominous warning allegedly comes from someone named Herbert Donald, though given her last post, I suspect it’s the actually the handiwork of Emmak.

‘Dear Fingers, did you know your girlfriend was a tranny with a big, black cock (web link attached)?’ Signed Alison Weber. Oh sure, that completely fooled me, Smack.

‘Dear Fingers, your girlfriend has complained privately to me that your penis is too small to satisfy her. Here is the solution to your problem (web link attached).’ Well, at least Stephanie Shaw has the decency to sign her own name to this litany of deceit; however I know she’s lying about ‘The Elephant’ complaining about it…because the byatch hasn’t even let me fuck her yet…

apocalypse then...

So, by then it was about 4am and ‘The Brain’ and I were pulling bongs on the balcony, watching the rain pelt down and wondering what to do with ‘Scary Bob’s’ small fleet of expensive vehicles, both of which were permanently grounded by now.


Eventually we gave up and passed out on the couches, lulled to sleep by the dope and constant drumming of the rain…
I woke up first. My watch said 11-30am and my head was throbbing. ‘The Brain’ was still fast asleep on the adjacent couch, sawing logs like his life depended on it. Outside it was still pouring; I could hear the deluge through the open doors on the balcony. Deciding that a glass of water was in order I swung my legs off the couch and prepared to head off to the kitchen.
WTF ??
As I put my bare feet down, I noticed the carpet seemed to be wet to the touch, which certainly got my attention. I looked around the lounge room; the whole carpet appeared to be glistening. I rubbed my eyes and checked again. It was still glistening…and as I walked towards the balcony doors I noticed the nearer I got to them…the wetter the carpet became underfoot.
While we had been sleeping, the rain had apparently been so heavy it had pooled on the balcony then flowed over the sliding glass door rails and into the lounge room. The carpet was absolutely soaked; every step I took caused a puddle of water to form around my foot. This was not good.
I went over to give ‘The Brain’ the latest update from Catastrophe Central, wondering if this flood would be the straw that finally broke his camel-like back. To my surprise he took the news quite well, saying it had happened before, though not on quite so grand a scale. Apparently, all we had to do was dry the carpets out with a space-heater…
Now, for those readers unfamiliar with space-heaters, imagine an electric hair-dryer the size of a commercial jet-engine. Normally you would use one (1) to warm up your entire backyard for a mid-winter BBQ. These things simply suck cuntloads of cold air in at one end and blow superheated air out the other end…
Over at ‘BHC Ltd’ (‘Scary Bob’s’ building company) they had plenty of space-heaters; they needed them sometimes on construction sites to dry out rain-sodden earthworks, or to help cure concrete when the outside temperature was too low. So, we jumped in a taxi, went over to the BHC warehouse, grabbed one of the company utes and loaded it up with a space-heater.
‘Maybe we should get two,’ said ‘The Brain’.
So we did, taking them back to Lane Cove, hauling them into the lounge and setting them up at either end of the room. We plugged them in facing one another and stood back as they roared to life, the giant elements deep in their bowels glowing orange with electrically-resistant rage, while the built-in fans sent a blast of super-heated air barreling across the space between them.
Within minutes the temperature inside had become too warm for comfort, so we throttled the space-heaters down a notch or two, then went downstairs, where it was considerably cooler…and began what turned into a very long game of ‘Monopoly’.
If someone landed on ‘Free Parking’ they had to skull a nip of bourbon, going to jail meant a bong-hit…Mayfair with hotels was big rent and a punch in the arm. We started at about 2pm and at 6pm we decided to take a break and go check on the carpet-drying, so we trudged up the stairs to the lounge, the air temperature soaring with each upward step…excellent drying conditions.
As long as I live, I will never forget the scene at the top of the staircase…
The soggy carpets were dry. Bone dry. Tinderbox dry. And, being a high-quality wool pile, they had also shrunk nearly a foot away from the walls on all sides, pulling up floorboards as they receded to the centre of the room.
‘Holy fuck !!!’
‘Oh mate…’
‘Fuck me.’
‘You’re so fucked…’
We trod gingerly over the shrunken remains of the still-steaming carpet, pausing to note that the case of red wine ‘Scary Bob’ usually kept in the bar had popped every cork, the contents of the bottles now just a slow-moving ooze of reddish molasses which crept, glacier-like in a downwards direction, finally coming to rest on the turntable of the ‘Bang and Olufsen’ stereo.
‘Oh my god.’
‘You’re so, so, so fucked, Brain.’
Then there were the canaries, ‘Snap’s’ prize-winning pair of breeding canaries, resting peacefully (and now permanently) on the floor of their cage in a somewhat medium/well-done condition.
The tropical fish were nicely juxtaposed, ironically floating at the top of their tank, eyes wide-open in final disbelief at the sudden global-warming extinction event.
The large cherry wood china-hutch, a wedding present if I remember correctly, twisted and bowed by the contraction of its fibrous tissues, was so utterly warped that the glass window-panes in each of the doors had fallen out, smashing themselves to smithereens on the floor.
There was more…much, much more…but those were the highlights…and I’m sure you get the picture.


To be finished next time…

please let this be the end...

I’m currently completing the final chapter of ‘The Brain’, however since every chick on the planet seems to have been swept away in the ‘SATC’ tidal wave, I might take this opportunity to have a moan.


One of life’s greater tragedies was/is that I used to be married to a girl who was/is an absolute clone of Sarah Jessica Parker. They didn’t/don’t just look similar…they were/are fucking identical twins separated at birth. Same age, same body, same face, same legs, same bongos…same everything. And when I say identical, I mean identical on the days when SJP looks hot; when she’s got the straight hair happening and isn’t wearing a tartan mini-skirt with red knee-high socks.
Now I don’t carry much baggage from that period of my life (anymore), however the sight of SJP on every billboard, every magazine cover…and now every blog is unsettling. I didn’t mind it back then; it was way cool to be boning an SJP-lookalike. These days I wish I’d been boning one of the other ‘SATC’-chicks…maybe Miranda…since they don’t seem to get as much exposure on the movie promos.
‘SATC’ was launched in 1998, while the ex and I were living in Japan. I don’t think I even knew who SJP was back then, having never seen ‘Footloose’ or ‘Mars Attacks’, however the massive publicity campaigns accompanying the blockbuster new TV series soon changed all that. Suddenly everyone was saying, ‘Hey Fingers…do you realize that Sophy looks exactly like SJP?’
Yes…I did, although at that stage of our relationship, I was more concerned about her weeing in the fridge at night
It soon got to the point where Sophy and I would go out in Tokyo for a walk and get approached by young Japanese girls wanting SJP’s autograph. At first, Sophy would tell them to fuck off; she was a short-tempered chick…and quite shy deep down…but quickly she began to take a perverse pleasure in forging SJP’s signature and letting the Japanese girls think they’d met a TV star. Sophy spoke nearly-fluent Japanese, which almost none of the Japanese girls found strange…and she’d jibber away with them, giving out tidbits of juicy gossip about the show; what happened on the set, who was fucking who off-set, hinting at bizarre twists in upcoming episodes…
I would stand to one side, minding my own business, trying not to appear bored and attempting to piece together the gist of the conversations with my basic grasp of the language. To my untrained ears it sounded mostly like. ‘Nani…nani…nani…Carrie-san…nani…nani…nani…Blodelick-san…nani…nani…nani…chigau desu…’
Which in fact it was; I later discovered that the Japanese girls were usually asking why I (Matthew Broderick) looked so much older in real life than I did on screen.
CUNTS…

surely things couldn't get w*rse...

The windscreen wipers could barely cope with the sheer volume of water being deposited on the car. We crept home at a snail’s pace, past flash floods, past urban waterspouts created when the torrents accumulating in gutters would meet an obstruction such as a parked car. It was quite surreal, although the joint we were smoking probably didn’t help make things any more realistic either?
Finally we arrived back at Lane Cove, which is where things began to go terribly wrong again. ‘Scary Bob’ had built his mansion on a highly elevated block, which meant the place had an almost impossibly steep driveway; steep and long. As kids we used to shit ourselves trying to skateboard down it in one piece.
No one had ever made it in one run but plenty of skin had been left on the surface in the attempt. Where the driveway met the horizontal pavement on the street, the angle was so severe that a car would need to come to a complete halt before crossing it or risk bashing the front bumper bar on the upslope.
‘The Brain’, well-rehearsed in this maneuver, did precisely the right thing and we began our ascent. The driveway stretched out before us and after each pass of the wiper over the windscreen, we’d have a brief glimpse of the river of water cascading down the ramp towards us before the whole scene became blurred again. ‘The Brain’ pressed gently on the accelerator and ‘The Scary Bobmobile’ reluctantly started to move forward. No more than five kph could be achieved without the risk of spinning the wheels, so it was going to be a long, slow climb.
We got well past the halfway point, doing just fine, when ‘The Brain’ lost patience and tapped on the gas a little too hard. The old Mercedes, with just one rear drive-wheel, suddenly lost traction and began to slow.
‘The Brain’ hit the panic button and the accelerator all in one smooth move, gunning the engine and causing the drive-wheel to lose whatever little traction it already had. With all the noise from the pounding rain and revving engine, we’d lost our visual bearings and had become totally oblivious to the fact we were no longer moving forward. We had begun to backslide down the driveway, almost imperceptibly at first but rapidly gathering speed as gravity began to act on our two-and-a-half tonne car.
‘Fuck ‘Brain’…use the handbrake!!!’
‘It’s OK, I know what I’m doing.’
‘The Brain’ pressed the pedal to the metal and we accelerated even more quickly in reverse, now going faster downhill than we were previously going uphill, so ‘The Brain’ ripped on the handbrake. This eventually slowed us down, primarily because by applying the rear brakes, we effectively had no steering and slewed sideways into the driveway’s side-wall.
‘Fucking great Fingers…now look what you’ve done.’
‘Me? You’re the cunt driving. I told you to hit the handbrake before we started moving too fast. You just locked up the steering, cunt.’
The sandstone blocks did a tremendous job of washing off both our car’s speed and its paintwork; the grinding of metal on rock was excruciating. Meanwhile we were still going backwards. ‘The Scary Bobmobile’ was more of a ‘Scary Bobsled’ now…
Suddenly, to our great relief the car seemed to bounce off the wall, however the relief was short-lived as we began to re-accelerate, gaining speed a lot faster than either of us anticipated.
‘Fuck!!!’
‘Fuck!!!’
We slid all the way to the bottom of the driveway, the rear bumper ploughing into the level footpath as we passed over it, then shot across the roadway before ‘The Brain’ stomped on the footbrake and brought the car to rest in the middle of the street.
‘Are you OK, Brain?’
‘What? Of course I’m OK. It was hardly a high-speed accident, you cunt. The car’s fucked though. We’re fucked. We’re so fucked.’
‘Us?’
‘Yeah…us. You’re part of this too, Fingers.’
‘I don’t think so Brain.’
‘Yeah well we’ll see about that. Fuck…we have to get this fucking car off the street.’
Whilst arguing the blame, we hadn’t noticed that ‘The Scary Bobmobile’ had stopped running. ‘The Brain’ tried the ignition but nothing happened. As we found out later, when the rear bumper bottomed out, the impact had apparently crushed the exhaust pipe flat, much like placing a potato on it and effectively blocking the engine’s airway. We got out of the car and surveyed the damage. It looked as though the ‘Scary Bobmobile’ had been through a carwash equipped with angle-grinders instead of brushes on one side. There were deep gouges in every panel running the entire length of the chassis. The driver’s door-handle had been completely ripped off.
‘Gee, that should buff right out, Brain…’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah…it’s over for you, mate.’
In the still-pouring rain we pushed the ‘Scary Bobmobile’ to the kerb, parked its sorry ass, locked it and scurried upstairs to our lair to ponder the catastrophe…


To be continued…

a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it...

So anyway…’The Brain’ went off to find some rope, while I foraged around in the back garden for a suitably heavy rock to weigh down the corpse. Ten minutes later we were hovering over the unquestionably dead hooker, deciding how best to attach the rock to her frail, little body. It was taking us a great deal of time to get the rock placed, which was just as well, because as we propped her up to try sticking the rock under her t-shirt…she coughed.
‘Jesus Christ, Fingers…she’s still alive.’
At this point I wasn’t sure whether ‘The Brain’ regarded this as good news or not, half-expecting him to turn into Freddie Krueger any second and produce an axe to finish the job.
‘Fucking hell, Brain…if we’d gone ahead with your stupid plan, we’d have actually been responsible for killing her. If they ever found the body and determined there was water in the lungs we’d be charged with murder, you cunt.’‘
'Well, you’re the one who said she was dead already.’
‘I’m STILL not a coroner, you fuckwad.’
As the wave of relief swept over us, an agreement was reached that the hooker had to leave the house…since neither of us were terribly convinced she wouldn’t die at some stage in the near future. Luckily for all concerned, The Royal North Shore Hospital was just a few minutes drive away. We hatched a meticulous plan to leave her in front of ‘Casualty’ where she’d be safe, so to that end we wrapped her in a blanket, carried the young lady down to the garage and opened the door.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuckety, fuck, fuck, fuck…I forgot the Jag’s fucked…we’ll have to take ‘The Scary Bobmobile.’
‘Oh brilliant.’
‘The Scary Bobmobile’ was a jet-black 600 SEL Mercedes, with ‘BOB’ number plates and nuclear-flash-white-walled tyres; possibly the non-stealthiest vehicle in the whole of Sydney. Still, we had few options (other than the many obvious, civilized, sensible ones) so we rolled the hooker-in-a-blanket into the boot (she was still at risk of throwing up), drove carefully over to the hospital, past the busy front doors, round the side to an unlit emergency door…and propped the now-semi-conscious body up against the wall.
We then drove out the other side of the hospital grounds, found a phone booth and called the hospital to let staff know there was a patient waiting for them outside. On the way home, ‘The Brain’ and I congratulated each other on taking the honourable course of action; we’d saved a life, we were possibly heroes…perhaps we’d both get a medal some day.
As we drove back to the house it started to rain, gently at first but then all of a sudden it was bucketing down, as only it can over on The North Shore, where it sometimes feels like God is trying to pour The Pacific Ocean on it through a sieve…

To be continued…

a brief interlude...

If I may take a very short break from the story to ask the youth of Australia a question…
Here is an excerpt from Steph’s amazing Big Brother Blog, in which she summarizes the voting rules for household evictions this week.


It is an unauthorized reproduction, much the same as the girl/girl pash photo of Steph that most of my clients now have installed as screensavers across SE Asia.


‘…The public vote to SAVE the HM's they like. At the end of the week, the bottom three HM's with the least save votes, are put up for eviction. The HM's then vote (two points and one point) who they would like evicted, except for the winner of FNL who gets four points and two points to use on evicting a HM, AND also gets to SAVE one HM from eviction. The person with the next least save votes then gets put up to take their place.

In yet another twist, the bottom three HM's also get to nominate each other too and their votes are kept secret until the end.

After this somewhat exhausting process, the three HM's get into "the revolver". Two HM's are put back in the house, and the one with the most eviction points is spun out to "the bleachers" where Jackie-O is waiting to interview them…’

My question: If you can follow this...WHAT THE FUCK WAS SO FUCKING HARD ABOUT THE FUCKING AWAs YOU SEEMED TO HAVE SO MUCH FUCKING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING, YOU DIM-WITTED CABBAGES…

That is all…and now back to ‘The Brain’…

the right thing to do...

If the hooker had looked dead when we first picked her up at ‘Les Girls’, she looked even deader now.
‘Did you kill her, Brain ?’
‘No, she took another shot of smack a while back and then she just collapsed. She’s been like that for a few minutes. Check her pulse. Is she dead ?’


I leaned over the unconscious girl and placed a finger on her carotid artery. She had no pulse whatsoever, although I’ve since learned that the carotid artery is apparently in a different position to where I was pressing, so that may have explained it. Nevertheless, at around 2am I pronounced her dead, which did not suit ‘The Brain’ at all…
‘She can’t be fucking dead.’
‘Well she is…so what are we going to do about it ?’
‘No, no, no…she can’t be. Get a mirror and hold it in front of her mouth…see if she’s breathing at all.’
Now that was a surprisingly good idea from ‘The Brain’, so off I went in search of a suitable mirror. All of them were either attached to walls or simply too large to be practical but eventually I found a shaving mirror in ‘Scary Bob’s’ bathroom, which I unscrewed from its extension arm and brought back into the lounge room. I held the shaving mirror in front of the girl’s face while ‘The Brain’ supported her head gently.
‘Breathe you cunt, breathe,’ begged ‘The Brain’.
There was nothing; no respiratory vapour condensing on the mirror at all. This chick was as dead as she appeared according to our thorough medical examination. Of course, in our diagnostic haste, we had failed to consider that shaving mirrors were specifically designed not to fog up…but that fact wouldn’t occur to me until a few hours later.
‘She’s toast, Brain. We have to call the cops and report this.’
I may not have been a brilliant doctor but as a Year 3 student of the law, I was fairly sure about the correct procedure for dealing with corpses.
‘No way, no cops…’
‘Are you fucking kidding me, Brain. We haven’t done anything wrong yet. The silly cunt O/D’d…it’s not a crime unless we fail to report it.’
‘I don’t give a shit about the cops but if we call them, then they’ll call ‘Scary Bob’ and he’ll know we were here and then we’ll all wish we had OD’d.’
‘So, what do you suggest ?’
‘We have to get rid of the body.’
‘What ? Who the fuck are you…Ted Bundy ? How do we just get rid of a body ?’
‘We can tie her up, weight her down with rocks or something and throw her in the river…’
Conveniently, the house had frontage on The Lane Cove River, with a private jetty and a small dinghy for getting out to ‘Scary Bob’s’ large cruiser, which was normally moored a hundred metres away.
‘Are you completely insane, Brain…I’m not dumping this body in a river. We didn’t kill her; we’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘OK fine but when ‘Scary Bob’ is called by the cops, while he’s on holiday with ‘Snap’…and has to come racing back to Sydney to sort this out…and he asks me who else was here…I’m going to say ‘Fingers’.’
‘Right…you go find some rope. I’ll be in the garden looking for rocks…’

To be continued…