The VCR

Spent much of the afternoon writing an instruction manual for a terribly manufactured VCR made by a sounds-alike electronics ‘boutique’ from Japan.  It’s the typical instructions and copy carefully worded for indemnification from litigation/class action  to be printed on an impossible to read 250 paneled, font 0.5 fold-out manual.

No, you’re not hard of seeing…..yes, VCR.  When one thinks about the current market for a poorly made single-head VCR today, unpleasant images invariably enter the mind and I would suspect that the tracksuited, boil-lanced retiree who needs a suitable device to play their prodigious collection of porno tapes would make up at least 80% of the market.

Given the questionable craftsmanship on these items, I feel it’s my duty to produce the most careful and considered wording  as humanly possible,  like I’m on a 2-way radio with the driver of a runaway bus, not expecting the outcome to be good, just hoping the bus doesn’t plough into a crowd of people.   After writing in a relentlessly boring haze for an hour or so, I realised this was wrong, and in a moment of lucid sadness, it dawned on me that I am exactly like the remote control button so inadequately glued to its perch that it falls off within two days…… a cheap alternative to something infinitely more suitable.   I fit perfectly into this brutal chain of manufacture.  Jesus, I wrote the instructions for programming this beast, and I couldn’t even program it myself given any sort of time constraint.

This is why writing instructional copy for ‘his and her’ kimonos with duck print, Joe Hollywood plastic wraparound sunglasses and hard candy jewelry is so sought after – these things only occasionally cause fires or kill people.

The temptation to slip in something non-sequitur or licentious into something so sterile is almost impossible to resist. …THE TAPES HEADS SHOULD NOT BE CLEANED WITH THE TIP OF YOUR PENIS UNLESS YOU ARE WEARING PLASTIC SANDALS AND ARE PROPERLY GROUNDED.

THE MODEL-TZA VCR COMES IN TWO COLORS, CHARCOAL GREY AND MISTY GREY.  BOTH HAVE BEEN DESIGNED TO DULL YOUR RETINAS AND HIDE SEMEN STAINS.  YOU HAVE CHOSEN CHARCOAL GREY – CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PURCHASE!

After Saturday’s ride I felt like I ridden as twice as far as I had.  I think there’s something wrong with me.  My body is lacking something, but I have no idea what.   I forged a new route through Albert Park, the Grand Prix track, then down Clarendon/Spencer St all the way to West Melbourne and the small terraces that line its streets.  I had not been down Spencer Street in years and was surprised to see such a huge and seemingly bustling train station there.   It also got me to thinking about all places and sights you get to see on a bike that could never cover on foot, and would be driving too fast to see if travelling in by car.

During yesterday’s ride in the sun I saw a bearded, bedraggled man marionetting a home-made wooden puppet on the sidewalk and singing an oddly heartfelt song about keeping your chin up when times get rough, a man-child of about forty years of age playing the cello so badly he attracted more onlookers than ever possible if he were actually skilled, and two heavy metal fans having sex in the bushes behind a warehouse.

Today, and possibly the entire week, will be devoted to rest and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with my body and why I take so long to heal.

At around 4:30pm I emailed off the final product for the VCR and rode around to Dan’s to give back his Giro helmet I’d borrowed since mine had been run over by a car.  The building he lives in is a beachside hotel filled with holiday makers and tourists.  You need a pass card to operate the elevator – and every other door in the building – which is a logistical nightmare when you and the person living inside are drunk.   After some banter about this and that, somehow we got onto the topic of chocolate milkshakes, which we both share of a love of.   He claims to have invented and championed the idea of pouring chocolate syrup intended for ice-cream into a glass and filling it with milk.

“I remember one Sunday morning as a child, running out of ice-cream and deciding on a whim to add milk in lieu of ice-cream and I was delighted with the results.  I called it chocolate supreme.” He said.

I paused for moment.

“You do realise people have been mixing milk with syrup and its variations for hundreds of years?  There is no way you were the first person to do that.”  I replied.

“Hundreds of years? Get the fuck out of here.  Chocolate syrup intended for domestic use is new. Only ice-cream parlors and hotdog stands could get in before then and that syrup was made specifically for the use in milkshakes. Hell, the car predates home-based chocolate syrup.”

We finally agreed that it was possible he was the first person to use that particular brand of syrup solely for use in a milkshake.

“Yes,” I said, “It’s possible.”

We played tennis for a bit, but were unnerved by a portly couple of had evidently booked the court and stood at the net fiddling with their racquet covers and eyeing us with veiled contempt.  I decided I would go for a swim and dove into the outdoor pool and was startled by waters so incredibly cold and unexpected my legs and brain began to numb and slow and I had trouble making my way back to the edge of the pool.   It was as if the pool had been drained and an iceberg had been left to melt there.

I ran into trouble again at the indoor pool.   I forgot the all the doors were controlled by those peculiar pass cards, including the indoor pool, which curiously means you can get in, but not out.  I sat in the spa for an hour, my skin pruning badly, until a German couple came in and let me out.

All the talk about milkshakes must have seeped into my subconscious, because without thinking about it I stopped at The Hangout on the way home for a shake, where they make a real milkshake person’s milkshake: malt, syrup, ice-cream, raw eggs, banana or your fruit of choice, topped with chocolate sprinkles and poured into a frosted glass, complete a striped paper straw.   There’s probably a number of other things that put in, but they are very reticent when I enquire about the recipe and I don’t feel it’s right to push the matter.   It makes you feel very full and satisfied and there really isn’t a better way to escape your troubles for four dollars and a struggle with a paper straw that, although beguilingly authentic, becomes soggy and limp after a while.

I payed the woman at the counter the four dollars in change and was about to walk out the door when she stopped me with a puzzled look on her face.

“This isn’t a dollar coin; it’s a ten cent piece.”  She said, placing her hands on her hips, her puzzled look becoming somewhat accusatory.

“Oh, I said, taking back the coin and inspecting it.  It’s so dirty I thought It was a dollar coin!”

“Yes,” she said, clearly not entirely satisfied with my answer.

Because of course, this is how I make my living, running an elaborate dirty ten cent piece grift on restaurants all over town.  I sit at home under bright lamp with jeweler’s magnifying glass in my eye burnishing ten cent pieces and then cunningly passing them off as dollars coins, netting the handsome 90c aggregate.

As I rode home through the early evening traffic, I wondered whether it was something about me that made the woman at the counter not want to immediately accept my excuse.   Although impossible to ever quantify, I often wonder how my life would change if I altered just one small thing about myself, like adding a mustache or changing my name Jason.  How much differently would the world treat me if I took to wearing satin shirts or overalls instead of t-shirts and sports jackets?  How so much of our lives are are driven luck and happenstance…

The Daisy Dukes

We’re still on the cusp of winter here in Australia.   Melbourne weather, in particular, is a fickle mistress.  Our summers are generally warm, but other than that the rest of the time is anyone’s guess.  I went out on my bike earlier and got completely drenched by a freak deluge.  Drenched. Throw in people opening car doors on you, taxis veering murderously across your path, and forty ton trams with no peripheral vision  bearing down on you and it’s ARMAGEDDON out there!

Regardless, I still really enjoy riding my bike in the city.   There’s a relaxing rhythm to it; you kind of feel like a blood cell floating through the arteries of a gigantic living organism.   An infirm old lady walks out in front of you, buses pull along either side of you leaving you nowhere to go, or a junky tries to rifle through your backpack at a set of lights, yet you remain unperturbed and you just keep on pedaling.

It definitely has the quality of one of those infinitely pointless undertakings (which are usually the best) – there is often no goal to pedaling if you are not riding for a specific destination.  You just peddle to peddle.

It’s an odd thing, and if you don’t ride much you might notice it, but when you get a bike, in a car dominated world, you’re declaring your allegiance to an underclass mode of transportation.  Some people really really don’t like bikes, especially if you slow their journey by a mere few seconds.   On the flip side of that, there’s a sense of camaraderie with other cyclists when you’re out there on the road.

If no time to stop and chat, I’ll often doff my cap or give a thumbs up to a fellow rider.  It’s a way of acknowledging you’re not alone.  To say: I might not be able to help you if you get sucked under that bus, but I’ve got a spare tube and some sports drink in my saddle bag if you need it.

I’ve thrown my clothes in the drier, but I don’t expect to wear them again today.   It was literally as if I had jumped into a pool fully clothed.   My cat is wedged in under my desk sitting on the heating vent.  I don’t think he’s ever been wet in his life.  If he’s outside and it starts to rain, he lets out a bird-like chirping noise and scrambles indoors.   Sometimes he completely covers the grate with his mass of cat-fur that the heating temporarily shuts down because no cold air is getting back which triggers some sort of safety mechanism, which is probably not good for the heating system.  However, I don’t have the heart to relocate him.   We call him raccoony, on account of his black and white fur and funny little squirrel/fox –like face.

Today he is scheduled for a trip to the vet.  Nothing serious, just a checkup.  It’s his most hated thing in the world, and he’s taken to weeing in his carry case every time he goes now.  You can only presume standing in a pool of your own urine only adds to tumult and anguish.

Sometimes I have to take cab (I don’t own a car) and there’s always that moment, which comes unannounced, when the air suddenly becomes pungently cloying. There’s no mistaking it.

I furtively wind down my window; perhaps maybe try to engage the cab driver in conversation – all of which is pointless, and the driver invariably become irate that we’ve stunk up their cab.  Let’s be honest though, it’s not like it usually smells that great to begin with, we’re just adding to the potpourri of disgustingness.    When I arrive at the Vet I take him to one of the nurses and quietly whisper “we’ve had a little accident on the way”.

Because of health problems I’m currently unemployed.  I’m just now tentatively looking for a job again, which I have to tell you is fairly slow going.   I look at the wanted ads and feel nauseas.   There are so many things I could simply never do.   Marketing assistant, credit manager, light vehicle assistant, midwife, boilermaker……  Who are the people that fill these jobs? There must be thousands of them.

It seems so foreign to me. What the hell is a boilermaker?

Every fortnight I’m required to check in with a case manager to discuss my job search, or they cut off my payments – it’s like having a parole officer.   Every time I go in, they make you wait at this round table with a fern on it before you go through a waist high swinging door into the consulting rooms.   There’s always a few beguiling characters awaiting you.  Last time I was there a bearded, bespectacled man was sitting alone, fiddling idly with the leaves of the fern.

“Welcome to the table!” he said,

“Thank you.”  I replied, “Good to be here.”

One time there was a younger guy in a leather vest was wearing a pair of those glasses with the eyes painted on the outside.   The novelty kind.  You have no idea how disconcerting it is to have someone in those glasses sitting directly across for you in complete silence.

I recently completed a week of work experience at a local library.  I really thought it would be more interesting,  I’ m not sure why.  I think I half expected them to let me read books or carry out my own research projects while intermittently attending to customer inquiries.  As it turns out, it’s much like any other menial job; you stack shelves until your forearms ache and then you scan returns until you’re hands buckle under the weight of large folio books.  I was shown around the library by an attractive girl who said she wanted to be a famous musician.

Half way through the week I realised she was involved in some sort of weird courtship with one other male librarians.  I can’t compete with anyone at the moment.  Because of the health issues I live an abstemious life which precludes me from lots of activates I might be thrown into if I were to enter into a showdown with another potential boyfriend.  I don’t drink, smoke, take drugs and I eat mostly healthy food.  I feel like Perry Como.  It’s awful.

Two months ago I worked for a party supplies and catering company run by a conservative middle aged guy.  He was incredibly enthusiastic about the work he did, and while on the way to each job as sat crammed into the front cab of his truck, he would run down in complete detail what we would be doing that job and how we would be doing it .  I would just sit there nodding mindlessly, knowing there was no way anyone human could remember even half of what he was saying.

“Ok, “he’d say,

“Where going to be using the blue tanks to fill the medium sized balloons with helium, and you’re going to want to turn the nozzle clockwise towards the filling attachment, which is red and then get the balloons from the cardboard box, which is stacked on the metal boxes.  Do you like sports? Who do you follow?”

He also sported, what I think is called a ‘male camel-toe’.    Tremendously tight jeans which left nothing to the imagination, with the seam splitting the ‘male’ part into the ‘camel toe’.

I generally don’t look in that area of a man if I don’t have to, but this was so conspicuous you couldn’t help but notice, nor could you look away.  It would capture your attention a solar eclipse.

Clothing is almost always embarrassing.  It’s really a matter of damage control.  My motto has always been to make sure you don’t look completely ridiculous and then go from there.   Temper a painfully mediocre outfit with something simply beguiling, like a garish belt or a jacket with oversized lapels.

I don’t know why it works, but it does, and it has saved me on many occasions.   Yesterday I went for an afternoon ride on my bike to get something to eat and I pulled up behind another cyclist.  He was wearing a regular riding jersey, but for shorts he had on a pair of daisy dukes cut so high it made anyone who happened to look clearly nervous something might spill out.

We pulled up together at the next set of lights and a car load of teenagers, who assumed were of the same party, made some ribald comments and then sped off laughing.   Mockery by association.

Which is fine, however my first thought was: I may as well be wearing daisy duke right now. Which begs the question, do I secretly want to wear daisy dukes?