Footy, Wipeout

Mum and Dad came down for the weekend and stayed in a hotel in the city. On Saturday we went to the Gabba to see the Lions play their opening match of the season.

I’m not mad about footy. But Dad quite likes it, and I used to watch it with him as a kid. Back when the Lions used to win everything. Since then things have changed. I’ve grown from a little smartarse into a big smartarse, and the Lions have deteriorated from a once near un-beatable team, to the fairly mediocre standard which saw them finish last season pondering not even making the top eight.

And so I found myself at the Gabba, on the cool Saturday evening, nice and close to the field with a view across the stadium. Watching them getting beaten up in their home ground by the West Coast Eagles.

It was just ridiculous man, the Eagles came out hard and fast and left the Lions running around aimlessly, game plan out the window, along with all hints of confidence. At one point three of the guys went to mark the same ball, crashed into each other and fell into a heap. Meanwhile an Eagle plucked it out of the air and sent it up the field and they scored another.

A couple of times in the past the Lions have staged momentous comebacks. But this time it was a big ask, even for them. Furthermore, they are for the first time without their legendary coach Leigh Matthews and many of the star players that comprised the unbeatable Lions machine that won three straight premierships. It was ex-captain Michael Voss’s first time coaching the side and it was beginning to look pretty embarrassing for him.

So anyway, the siren sounded to signal the end of the first quarter. Score something stupid like 12-50 and the crowd was spewing. A few people walked out.

Vossy cruised onto the field brandishing a whiteboard and the team gathered around sullenly. He spent the next five minutes scrawling madly upon it, and gesticulating wildly. The break ended and Voss left the field. Play recommenced with the ball-up, and suddenly, everything changed.

I don’t know what Michael Voss said to the team in that five minutes, but for the next two hours the  crowd of Lions fans was treated to a most almighty resurgence. Cheering every mark. Roaring at every tackle. The Lions kicked about five unanswered goals and equalised. Insane. In the fourth quarter they streaked ahead by a couple of goals and held the margin right to the end. The buzz in the stadium was awesome.

So I’m not a huge footy fan. But watching that courageous victory I really enjoyed. I loved chanting and taunting the Eagles supporters in front of us as the game slipped from their grasp. I especially enjoyed when Jonathan Brown hammered some little Eagles player about 20m from where we were sitting. We were on our feet, fists in the air. I have to admit there’s something pretty cool about watching fast, violent ball games in a stadium. I never really got it when I watched it on TV. Now I understand.

I don’t understand the old guys who take it really serious. You know the ones who yell advice to the players. “RUN IT MGRATH!” “LIONS I WANNA SEE YOU WINNING THOSE CONTESTS AYE!”
Shut up mate, you’re an insurance salesman, not the friggin’ coach. Noone cares about your half baked bullshit advice. Get off your soap box and stop embarrassing your wife.

Sunday me and Mike went bodyboarding. It was my second time out after I had a month out of the water as a result of me injuring my chest. It proved to be quite an intense afternoon. A strong south easterly wind whipped up after lunch and sent big dumping waves into the open beach we were stupidly attempting to surf.

I now have a new record for my worst wipe out ever. I got out past the main break and saw a big one coming. It wasn’t too steep and didn’t look that nasty. I started to paddle. Suddenly it was 80 degrees steep and I was teetering on the top, like two metres up in the air. I could either attempt to abort and probably go down backwards and get smashed. Or I could attempt to catch it and shoot out the bottom.

I went for the latter. I sent the board flying down the front, but I got too much air and lost it when I hit the water and the whole show exploded on top of me. My face hit the sand numerous times, and I surfaced about fifty metres down the beach.

I trudged out of the water, seeing stars and sat on the beach quietly for the next ten minutes or so. Realising I’m not really that great at bodyboarding.

Not that you have to be good at something to love it.

I mean I’m alright. I’m certainly a lot less fit due to the afore-mentioned injury. But I shouldn’t have gotten that injury either. It was due to stupid technique. I really need to refine stuff like that. And possibly surf on a better beach than the spit. I think I might have a crack at Burleigh Heads this weekend. I’m sick of negotiating dumpers and crashing through white foam. It’s fun for awhile but there’s no finesse, and it’s pretty dangerous.

Dreams, fights, explosions, mince

So once again I find myself contributing the blogosphere. Sitting up in my room in this pink shack. At some point tonight I’d like to go downstairs to punch and lift and stuff that guys my age do to mitigate instinctive tendencies toward aggression. Which reminds me of a recurring dream I’ll get to in a bit. Anyway, I’m blogging instead of going downstairs right now. In order to exit the house and go downstairs I have to run the gauntlet of three women cooking mince and their associated revelry. It’s not something I feel like facing at this juncture.

It’s just the cooking mince really. Man, even when I ate meat as a kid, I still found that smell pretty oppressive. As a child I’d note the swarms of blowflies crowding the kitchen screens when mince cooking was in progress, and wonder wtf the deal was.

We were meant to eat it.

Hello to you Cara, if you are reading!

Back to the aggression thing. Me and my brocousin have tried to commit as far as possible to remembering and writing down dreams upon waking of a morning. The goal is lucid dreaming. I haven’t come close to achieving that so far, but I sometimes remember to write down the dreams. And I’ve begun to notice some recurring themes emerging. The most obvious is the last three nights or so, and generally fairly often throughout the last few weeks, my dreams have roughly culminated in me beating the absolute shit out of someone. I didn’t think I was a real angry guy – ever since the jobquit and subsequent summer of fun, I’ve been chilled as. Yet here I am in my dreams, pounding and kicking people till they’re on the ground, and continuing to give them a good thrashing until others drag me away.

I used to always dream of running, sometimes away from danger or annoyance, but just as often for the sheer thrill. I never dream I’m running from people anymore. They run from me.

I’ve watched a couple of violent films lately. That could be to blame. Due to the fact I stopped playing violent games years ago, and don’t watch any TV or many movies, I’m not as desensitised to violence as most. So when I AM confronted with it, it’s pretty significant.

I also dreamt the world ended a few weeks ago. I wrote it all out, remembering it in fairly intricate detail, right up to and including explosions ripping across the land, being engulfed in flames and lava and my limbs going in different directions. I posted it here briefly, then decided it too horrific and promptly pulled it down. It remains in the vault with the other weirdness.
(#)
My dreams are often apocalyptic, but they’ve never been as horrendous as the afore-mentioned one. I woke up paralysed with shock. Took me a few days to get over. Thankfully no more have come.

The last few dreams have been boring as hell, probably due to not doing too much interesting most days.

I was going to talk about how I got a job, and nearly collapsed my lung and couldn’t bodyboard for a month, and how I went with my first ride on a small inflatable object towed by a sports boat at about forty knots.

That might wait till next time, got to go get some exercise before I fall asleep.

Ten percent less?

In the last few months, I’m guessing you’ve come across an advertising campaign such as this one:

http://evolve.ergon.com.au/10Less.aspx

I think it’s rather misleading when the privatised energy industry runs ads encouraging domestic consumers to cut their usage. Come again? Do they expect me to believe that they genuinely want to see a ten percent reduction in residential usage? Surely that would mean a ten percent reduction in profits in that sector as well. That’s got to be a massive amount of cash. I honestly doubt any company in western society would *actually* want or expect this to come true.

In my view it’s just a PR exercise. In this post-Inconvenient Truth world, corporations of all kinds have scrambled to incorporate feel-good green symbolism into their reams of sanitised, unrealistic policy.

I have a hunch they know people won’t voluntarily cut their energy consumption by anywhere near enough to have any impact on climate change or their profits.

It peeves me a little that while industry, transportation and agriculture spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on extraordinary levels, energy retailers get all patronising and tell residential consumers to cut their usage. I’d wager industrial and commercial usage of electricity would outstrip residential by quite a margin. This business of turning off lights when you’re not in the room is fair enough, but it’s unrealistic to believe it’s going to make a difference to the big picture. Unless of course it’s just one mini component of a giant, well executed scheme to bring shit under control and avert oblivion. Which, unlike many of my peers, I reckon would be pretty achievable if people hardened the f*ck up and accepted that a pay-to-pollute scheme would discourage pollution and encourage investment in clean, renewable technology.

“But my bill will go up, aye?”

“I dig coal out of the ground, I expected to have a job forever. Now you wanna put me out of a job. You greenie sons of bitches”

If that’s your attitude, learn to swim.

Anyway. Speaking of feel good symbolism, the idea of a few thousand residents turning off the lights in their home for one hour, on one day out of three hundred and sixty-five is patently ridiculous. Even on a symbolic level.

Yup, its that time of year again.When I first heard of Earth Hour, I was initially quite skeptical of the concept.

Surely I could be forgiven for that though. Pretty sure that the coal fired power station is going to continue consuming just as much coal, and polluting just as much for the entire duration of the “earth hour”. They can’t just turn em on and off, it takes hours to get them on and offline.

So what the hell does this achieve? Well today I read this article, and it made me a little less cynical:

“THE NSW Government has backed calls for Earth Hour to be viewed as a referendum on greenhouse gas cuts and be taken into account at an international climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, this year”

The idea that millions of individuals can gain the attention of populist governments and instigate a real, an actual shift in paradigm and pave the way for a brighter, more sensible future is incredibly appealing to me. I might be idealistic, but it’s better than the alternative..

Queensland election 2009

……CHOOSE…….

The Borg [in full intellectual stride.] Or  Bligh [I'm scared too.]

Apparently there’s an election in a week. Quick! Decide!

I’m actually happy with the way it’s gone down because the biggest problem I have with elections is the incredibly drawn-out campaign process. What a waste of time and resources.

As for my weapon of choice, Borg/Bligh, I can’t bring myself to vote for either.

Like many other Queenslanders I’m a little disgruntled with the sitting government. They’ve proven a special kind of ineptitude I assumed only possible under the administration of a bunch of .. monkeys? Five year olds? No, that would be unfair to the animals and kids. Health scandal, power station scandal, grand plans for gross environmental vandalism, not to mention exorbitant spending on patronising PR campaign after patronising PR campaign.

So yeah, I’m pretty pissed. I’d like to get some revenge at the polls, however it involves me voting for this guy

The Borg actually seems like an okay guy. It’s more his cronies and their collective ideology that bothers me. The Liberal and National parties in Queensland have such a ridiculous history, and even though they’ve had over a decade to think about why everyone hated them, I’m pretty sure they haven’t evolved sufficiently to be a viable alternative government in modern Australia.

I would like to give the Borg the vote just because he tries so hard, and face it, he’s hilarious. But if, in the incredible scenario where the LNP somehow pulls off a win next week, they won’t deserve it. It won’t be anything to do with them or their policies. It’ll be how much Labor sucks and how sick we all are of seeing Bligh in that hard hat.

Ah well, 1 the greens, blank the rest.

Less general exuberance?

So I just read through my old blog, and I’ve come to realise I sound a lot less interesting and generally post a lot less than I did a couple of years ago.

I don’t think that in actuality I do less interesting stuff these days. It’s more a case of me finally maturing a little and being less inclined to embellish upon so many inane details of my life.

Please enjoy the following snippet from the mind of Dirk, aged twenty.

Easter weekend:

Was spent in a somewhat obscure fashion, although these kind of situations are seemingly unavoidable for me.
In the preceeding weeks it had been decided that me and my girlfriend would camp a few nights down at Inskip and just chill out. In typical bogan male fashion I somehow ended up inviting my best mate and brother along.
Toine, in turn, invited his mate.
So before gf knew it, there were going to be four skylarking, boozing, fire lighting yahoo’s accompanying her instead of the originally planned one.
Fast foward a week and some annoying shit was happening, I forget what, but it ended with me deciding I wanted less people on the camping trip. That night I broke the news to poor old Toine that he wouldn’t be permitted to join us.
Fast foward another week and girlfriend and I are fighting about something silly. It ended up with me driving off to an undecided location. I decided I was going to leave for camping without her and she could join me after she had finished up with her fancy COCKtail party.

Picture 11pm on easter Friday. Dirk messaging his mate Waity with “so, you ready to leave for camping? now i mean”
30 seconds later Waity responding with “give me 20 mins”
A few mins later another message from Waity “Wife says I can’t leave till the morning. How’s 3am for you?”
I messaged him back with “3am it is”

I decided to drive back to the girlfriend’s house to apologise for being a jerk. I still wasn’t in the best moods so I decided that it was a great time to get Hungry Jacks drive-thru.

Let it be known I am normally very against things like this, but you have to understand I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.
I didn’t have a clue what to do, where to drive, or what to say. After a couple of wrong turns I eventually pointed the suby into the mouth of the drive thru lane.

I ordered successfully into the speaker, which I am sure was strategically hidden in the bushes to ensure it’s sudden emitting of noise scared the absolute piss out of any sod unfamiliar with the procedure. Like myself.

I had instructed the girl to supply me with a vegan friendly meal of any description along with the largest sized softdrink syrup they could muster. To “empty a bottle of cheap shit vodka into”.

She refused to supply me with the softdrink syrup so I didn’t end up getting my wish of mixing the raw stuff directly with the vodka. But no matter. I was eagerly awaiting my vegan meal.
Further she made sure I specifically stipulated exactly the menu items I wanted. Apparently not allowed to be left to her own device.
It ended up that the only item suitable was the vegie baguette, and some chips. Supposedly cooked in canola. Most likely cooked along with “nuggets” and other awful, awful shit but I wasn’t in the mood to care.

Around five minutes later the girl came back to the ordering window, a stricken look on her face but with my paper bag, already stained with grease. I distinctly heard my stomache scream some extrordinary expletive at me as I handed over my $10 note in return for the demon food. The deal was done, I knocked into low first and chirped all four wheels.

Back at the house I switched on the footy and opened the bag. I applied vodka to the large coke in copious amounts. I ate the damn baguette and the damn chips and I felt shit and bloated and drunk. Three cheers for living like a regular shmoe!!

God help you all.

Forgive me for my arrogance but seriously, am I one of the few people who gives two shits about themselves and the environment? I mean, Hungry Jacks [aka burger king] is one of the big 5 prince of bastardry companies screwing the environment to provide a cheap, greasy foodstuff to drooling masses. But it’s all McShit. If the food was really awesome it could go at least some way towards justifying so much evil involved in its production. But no, it really is rubbish. It’s horrid. So why?

Calm, Bruce.

…

So, later that night girly arrived home and we exchanged apologies and all was very well.

I awoke later at 3am to my vege baguette sending me a little bill for its services.
I decided not to attempt sleep any further as I considered that my wellbeing for the day to be already unsalvageable. I opted instead to message Waity and suggest we leave then and there. Waity happened to be awake because he has the most hardcore insomnia out of anyone I know. Myself included. 10mins later I was at his place and soon we were on the road, in the dark, to a campsite we hadn’t booked, in the high season.

Driving through to the other side of town, I spotted a dark, hunched shadow shuffling along the footpath. For some reason I instantly knew it was Tom, who some might recognise from this blog as my mate who is passionate about his death metal and anti religious stance. I did a uturn and went back to chat, as I was pretty sure noone was in a big hurry at that time of day.
Turned out he was walking home from the local nightclub. His first words were:

“Man I am so pissed. Fuck man I’m drunk. Hehehehe.”
“FUCKING CHRISTIANS.”
“So, where are you guys heading, how are you man”

He went on to rant a little further on how much christian people pissed him off, until I informed him that waity, sitting next to me, was in fact a reasonably comitted christian who attented church weekly. We all shared a moment of discomfort and embarassment before we all laughed it off. Thats what I love about all my mates – everyone different and eccentric, but all top people who need not be feared or disliked. Waity puts up with me saying “christ” a lot and my outspoken pro sex-before-marriage stance. Tom puts up with me being vegan and not appreciating death metal properly. They forgive me for it and respect me for the dude I am. And for that I am grateful.

ANYWAY.

We soon left tom to catch a taxi home/beat up priests, and continued on our little journey.

An hour or so later we pulled into the Rainbow Beach township, and after a brief stop for Waity to buy a pie, continued up to Inskip.
..Where we were reminded of our shitty planning ability. It was even worse than when I’d been in new years 2005/2006, when stories of riots had reached the state media. Sedans lined the roadside, and all other space was taken by four wheel drives/caravans/dogs/insane easter campers.

Inskip really is a playground for inner city bogans boasting a beautiful beach but nothing else in the way of natural beauty, and for that you do have to hand it to the EPA. To encourage them all to cram into an area which was once sand mined, let them light fires, let them take their dogs and shit everywhere and generally fuck the place up. Distract the stampeding troglodytes from the places worth saving like parts of Fraser and countless other gorgeous national parks. Respect.

Anyway, once again, I digress.

Basically anyone down there would have noticed the suby with the loud exhaust and piloted by the little bogan and his big mate rock up, drive up the beach, around the campsites, wake everyone up to the beautiful dawn, then leave as quickly as they had arrived.

The place was full to overflowing, not an inch of spare ground.

A brief enquiry at the local IGA back in town confirmed it: “Sorry, no more permits. EPA has limited numbers this year”

About time this was enforced too. Once again, utmost respect to EPA for doing a good job and keeping a few shreds of common sense in the management of the area.

Waity and I didn’t care. We were in high spirits. The easter weekend had just begun, it was early morning, we had half a tank of fuel still, and plenty of excuses to just drive around and chill.

Me, Waity and the girls spent the rest of the day at his place with a campfire and the food we had packed for camping. It was a great weekend. All’s well that ends well.

There you go. 1437 words to describe that I’d pissed off my girl, got drunk, ate a burger, then gone skylarking with my mate.

I really don’t like the attitude I apparently had to my girlfriend either. In reality I think we only fought that once. I sounded like somewhat of a dickhead. I doubt that would really have been the case.

Me posting less is really a testament to a conscious decision on my part to not have such a big mouth. Both through my own discoveries and in my reading, I’ve come to realise that those of us who constantly blab about themselves cheapen their words and bore their peers.

Ironically, over the past four months or so I’ve done some things that would, to my twenty year old self at least, be considered rather momentus. I haven’t written great diatribes on them simply because I no longer want to be captain big mouth embellisher. It’s not a cool look.

That said, I still love writing, though I still am not nearly as decent at it as I’d like to be. I think I should post more and I will.

I’m striving to be more concise with my writing, as a result of influences of such excellent writers as Jack Kerouac and Nick Hornby. I want to be more punchy and get across what I want to say, rather than meander about with grand, floury prose.

I don’t think I’ll be delving into the vault and handing out personal dirt on such a grand scale. I doubt anyone cares. I get a lot less worked up about stuff these days. Especially the small stuff.

I’ve come to like that people don’t know quite what I’m up to. The plan’s in the pipeline, the execution of which is proceeding as I have foreseen. And that’s all you need to know

Open letter to my local constabulary

Dear Inspektor Ricarto

It has come to my attention you disagree with me parking my falcon sedan on the footpath outside my inner-suburban home.

While I’m willing to accept your patchy enforcement of this particular by-law, I can’t help but wonder why you would choose to target my vehicle at half five, Monday afternoon, when for the duration of each and every week day the entire street becomes inundated with train commuters who ham-fistedly arrange their stupid jalopies up and down its entire length. Seems they have some aversion to using the QR carpark across from the station.

Yknow why I parked on my footpath? Because the rest of the street was crowded up with the afore-mentioned vehicles.

Congratulations on a job well done.