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…
