Entry 25: Olio

Everyday my bus drives by a giant anti-smoking billboard with a picture of a clogged artery. It looks like a cannoli made of swollen, infected flesh instead of dough. It’s disgusting. It’s not the only one I’ve seen in the city either. Honestly, I would rather live with a little more secondhand smoke in the air than start my day by looking at giant images of a plaque-clogged arteries. By the way, isn’t the message “smoking is bad”, already out enough? I think we get it. We seem to do this thing a lot in the States (and perhaps Down Under too) where we identify that something is becoming a problem, which is good, but then we way overstate it and overreact, so that the solution is almost as bad as the problem.*

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Our stove/oven is perhaps the most annoying appliance I’ve ever had to use. On the oven dial, all the settings are in icons not words, so if I want to cook something on broil, I have to reference the manual to find out which icon represents broil. It’s not like the pictures are intuitive, either (oh, two wavy lines represent bake, of course). If one needs a manual to figure out the basic functions of your oven, you’ve failed as a manufacturer.

The stove is one of those completely flat electric stoves (no coils). First off, I prefer gas many times over, because it’s much easier to set the temperature correctly when you can see the flame, but that’s not my biggest gripe with our stove. My biggest gripe is that the on/off “button” (which is just a circle) is slightly temperamental so sometimes you have to press a few times to get it to go. I find myself sliding my thumb all around it, applying different amounts of pressure on different points, before it goes. Why design it this way? Why can’t you have a prominent on/off button or switch?

I feel the same way about my iPod, by the way. Why on earth is the on/off button the same as the play/pause button? I have to press down on it with just the right amount of pressure to get it to turn off. It’s an amazing piece of technology, and yet for some reason the simplest function is extremely annoying to utilize. It makes no sense.

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The other day at H’s, I was looking through his musical selection for something to play, and I put on The Backstreet Boys as a joke. Everybody booed and demanded I change it and started busting my chops, including H. I thought that was funny since I pulled it from his collection. How can you make fun of somebody for playing your music?

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I gave up on Catch-22 after about 100 pages. I just didn’t like it. Now, I’m bookless, but S put John Krakauker’s Pat Tillman book on order at the library at for me, so I’m waiting for that.

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A first-person account by a former NFL agent (weird, the first hit on Google was a link to my old home town paper, the Bellingham Herald) admitting he paid college players has piqued an ongoing sports-fan debate about whether or not college athletic stars are adequately compensated. I’m strongly of the opinion that they are not. On the contrary, I think they are often unjustly exploited to a very large degree. It’s a bit absurd to me that as a graduate student who did a relatively small amount of teaching, I was paid a stipend of about $20,000 a year, but the members of the basketball team who filled a 20,000 seat arena 15 times a year were not allowed a cent.

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*I tried to find this clip from The Simpsons on youtube, but couldn’t. It’s quite funny though. The scene is that Homer just took a driving test at the DMV, but his sisters in-law, who work at the DMV (and who are constantly feuding with Homer) failed him.

Marge: [walking up] So, Homer, how'd you do?
Homer: [glum] Well, I...
Super: Ladies, please don't tell me you're smoking in a government building. Because that is precisely the kind of infraction that can cost a couple of sisters their promotion.
[they gasp, and stammer]
Homer: [chuckles to himself] [sees Marge looking unhappy]
[sighs] I'll never forgive myself for this.
[grabs both cigarettes, drags]
Super: Wait a minute! Those are yours, sir?
Homer: [monotone] Yes. [coughs] I am in flavor country.
Super: [skeptical] Both of them?
Homer: [hacks] It's a big country.
Super: Ladies, I apologize. And you, sir, are worse than Hitler. [she slaps him]

Entry 24: Concerts, Festivals, and Enduros

This turned out to be an action-packed weekend. On Saturday evening, S and I went to see the Robertson Brothers with a few others. If you don’t know who the Robertson Brothers are then you are probably not alone, so I’ll fill you in. They’re an Australian, 70s-style rock group. They do a lot of covers of bands like America, CCR, and The Doobie Brothers. They aren’t bad. The lead singer has a cool, twangy, nasally voice, that works for him, and the other musicians are good, as well. I wasn’t super into the show, however, because they played a lot of slow, sad songs, and didn’t really let it fly. They also have a guy in the band who does nothing but sing backup vocals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. No instrument, no dancing, no nothing. (He must be the Daniel Baldwin of the Robertson Brothers.) He just sits in the back on a stool looking like Corey from Pawn Stars and every now and again he’ll chime in with some harmony. Oh, he also points to the other members of the band when they’re doing their solos.

Sunday morning we are attempting to sleep in after a relatively late night, and at about 7am I start hearing what sounds like metal poles clanking together. It keeps me up for a while, but eventually I fall back asleep, only to be reawakened about an hour and a half later to somebody doing what sounds like a mike check (one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three). At this point, despite my sleepy daze, I do the math (metal poles = tents, tents + mike check = street festival = loud noises). I know what’s going on, but I pretend like I don’t and try to go back to sleep. All I’m asking for is another hour and a half, but it is not to be. I lie in bed for a while, but my hyper-vigilance has kicked in, so I can’t sleep. Eventually, I get out of bed and take a peek outside. Yep, it’s a street fair alright.

[Scene from our balcony Sunday morning.]

It looked sorta fun, but it ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else. The sidewalks of our street are hard enough to navigate already. With this bigass festival going on, they became almost unusable. The street itself, which was shutdown to cars, was even slower-moving. I wouldn’t have cared, but we had places to go and things to do. And by places I mean H’s house. And by things I mean eating and drinking and watching cars go around in circles.

[Dancers getting down to Gloria Estefan.]

H hosted a BBQ at his place for the Island Enduro. An enduro is a very long motorsports race, and for as big as a sports fan as I am, I have to say car racing is bor-ing. This particular race started at 10:30am and ended at 5:30pm – 7 hours! Then, after it was over, H put on a Formula 1 race (slightly different looking cars going around in circles). Despite the racing, it was a great time – lots of good company and good eating and drinking. And I made sure to only overeat by a normal ridiculous amount. I didn’t overeat by a ridiculously ridiculous amount, so this time I didn’t have to spend a large portion of the night in a potato-bug position on the bathroom floor.

Entry 23: Vetoed

[If my entry were a ghost, S would be Ray Stanz.]

My midweek blog entry got vetoed by S this week. I read almost every entry to her after I finish, and occasionally she asks me to omit something small, but this is the fist time an entire entry got nixed. It wasn't anything bad, but apparently not something I am supposed to post on the Internet. I tried to change it to be about my new fictional American friend T who just happens to have many of the same characteristics as S, but it was getting too ridiculous, so I just scrapped it altogether. C'est la vie.

(By the way, is the Ghostbuster sign not one of the greatest movie icons of all time?)

Entry 22: Labor Day Weekend

It’s Labor Day weekend here in Australia. I like Labor Day. It seems weird to me to have an entire holiday based on the process of giving birth, but whatever, I appreciate the day off regardless. S is going to spend tomorrow evening in Sydney and then go on some sort of day trip with a newfound friend of hers who lives there on Monday. I thought about going, but I’m not so interested in the day trip, and if I just go for Sunday and then come back on Monday I’m giving up a large part of the long weekend, which I can’t really afford to do, because I have to start put my resume together and looking for jobs. It seems like I shouldn’t have to do this, being that I just started my current job a few months ago, but if we stay in Oz only through my current contract, which seems likely at this moment, then I’ll need a job next year, and this is when a lot of academic jobs start accepting applications. It’s such an arduous, unfun process, but so be it.

In other news, the Collingwood Magpies won the AFL premiership final rematch by 56 points. I know all my readers were dying to know the result. Speaking of sports I’m on the verge of winning my fantasy baseball league. I’m not bragging, but I’m a damn good fantasy baseball manager. Barring an epic collapse in the next few days I will have won the championship in one league, and finished with the best overall record in another (although I lost my first playoff game in that league). Moneyball, baby. I’m good at finding value (or lack thereof) in players when it’s not obvious to the common fan. It’s impossible to win all the time in fantasy baseball, there is way too much randomness, but I’m usually able to tilt the scales in my favor.

Anyway, daylight savings time starts here this week and ends in the States next week. That means that in two weeks we will go from being 14 hours ahead of the east coast US (17 west coast) to being 16 hours ahead of the east coast US (19 west coast). This hopefully will not have any effect on them showing live NFL games.

S hasn’t had much to do lately which is not good. She gets bored and antsy when she doesn’t have “things” to do during her day. I’m the opposite. I love doing nothing (which isn’t actually nothing, but just the things that I want to do), especially if I know it’s temporary. For me, it’s great to be on a downtime at work, or to have a job waiting for you that you haven’t yet started, because you can goof off and you don’t have the pressure of needing to find a job weighing on you. In fact, if I could live in a perpetual state of being about to start a job, I probably would do so. S wouldn’t though, so hopefully she finds more to do soon. She certainly wouldn’t make a good retiree. I think I’m going to make a great retiree. I mean, I actually have to have a career to retire from first, but after that.

Entry 21: NFL and T&A

Last Saturday* the grand finale championship game of the Australian Football League was played. It featured the Collingwood Magpies and the St. Kilda Saints. Remarkably, the game ended in a 68-68 draw, so they are going to play another championship game this coming Saturday. Seriously, they are going to play a whole new game. Over 100,000 fans attended the game and they didn’t even get to see a winner. It would be like if the Super Bowl was tied after regulation and instead of playing overtime they just played another Super Bowl the next week. It seems insane to me. But, it does mean that I can watch this time. I didn’t watch last weekend.

In news about my football (NFL), I’m happy to report that they actually show it here on normal TV. I have to wake up a 6am on Monday to watch it, but still I can watch it. Sometimes they show a game live, sometimes they show it on an hour and a half delay and filter out a lot of the garbage (half time, injuries, time outs, etc.). This is nice, because it’s a condensed, action-packed version (and it means they have time to show two games instead of one), but it’s also bad because then it’s harder for me to follow the games online that aren’t on TV, because I will see online the score of the game that is on TV, and it will ruin the surprise of that game for me. So, what I do is I watch the game on TV, and I open a window on my computer that gives a play-by-play description of the Seahawks game, but I size the window perfectly so that it only shows the Seahawks game and no other games. This way I can follow the Seahawks online and watch the TV game and not have the ending be spoiled. I might even have S open and size the window for me if she’s awake, just so that I avoid any updates or pop-ups that would reveal the score.

In other NFL news, there was a story a week ago about a fluff reporter for a Mexican TV station who entered the New York Jets locker room after a game to do an interview, and complained that she received inappropriate comments and felt “uncomfortable”. I heard about this on a call-in radio show, and nearly all the female callers were taking the side of the team, saying, in essence, that the woman didn’t deserve professional treatment because she didn’t dress professionally. I thought this was quite harsh on the woman (I mean what's professional to one might not be professional to others), so I went home to see if I could find some pictures of her in a typical work outfit. Of course, it wasn't difficult (see below) if there is one thing the Internet can deliver reliably it's pictures of attractive females.


[Girls, if you want to be reporters study hard. It obviously takes a lot of hard work and schooling.]

My take on it now is this. It’s still definitely not okay for the players to catcall her. They are at work, after all. It’s not a Jillian's on single's night. But, the whole thing probably could have been avoided if she dressed like she was at work and not at a bar (apparently she wears heels on the grass sidelines, which is absurd). It’s like when I didn’t lock my bike up and somebody stole it. I wasn’t in the wrong, the person who stole it was in the wrong, but I could have easily prevented it. If this woman is sensitive to off-color comments, maybe it’s not the best idea to wear jeans that are tighter than bicycle spandex in the presence of 50 knuckleheaded, half-naked 25 year-old alpha males, with stratospheric testosterone levels. Just a thought.

*By the way I hate the ambiguity that can arise when we use terms like last, this, and next when referring to days of the week. If it’s Wednesday then what’s “next Saturday”? Is it the actual next Saturday or is it the Saturday of next week? And what’s “last Monday” is it two days ago or the Monday of last week?

Entry 20: Bellyaching

[This is roughly half of what I ate on Sunday. It was so delicious. It was almost worth it.]


It seems like I only have the time now to update this blog on the weekend. In getting settled in at work (and thus doing a bit more) and with S being back it’s hard to find the time to post during the week. I’ll try to do it at least one week day a week from now on, though.

So the title of this entry does not refer to complaining (although I do love to do that), but rather to my belly literally aching. I ate too much at a barbecue last Sunday and my stomach hurt. It wasn’t like I overdid it a bit, took some Pepto, and slept it off. I way overate (at one point I counted roughly twenty rib bones on my plate) and after the barbecue spent much of the night doubled over in pain, making moaning noises in S’s direction. She was sympathetic, to her credit, since she told me the entire night to go easy. I didn’t listen and I paid the price. I have never been in that much pain before from overeating. At one point I felt like I might throw up, so I just sat by the toilet for a few minutes. S came in to check on me and rub my head. I felt like a sorority girl who ate the fruit at the bottom of the party punch.

In other news, my adventures on the bus seem to never cease. A few days ago a man with a cane got on, attempted to walk up the steps to the back of the bus, then fell down writhing in pain grasping his knee. I yelled to the bus driver to stop the bus then the driver and I went over to help the man. Turns out he has a prosthetic leg, which somehow got caught on the step and bent his stub forcefully in an unnatural direction. We had to phone an ambulance and then take his leg off, which required taking his pants off (I let the bus driver take the lead on that one). Then we just sat there until the ambulance came – me, the driver, and the man in his underpants with half a leg. There were a few others on the bus, but they were women, who had moved to the front of the bus to avert their eyes, so as to avoid further embarrassment to this man. I wasn’t quite sure what the etiquette was while waiting for the ambulance. Could I read? Is that disrespectful? We are just sitting here waiting, after all. It’s pretty boring. I decided to listen to some podcasts on my iPod, which nobody seemed to mind. Eventually the ambulance came, they loaded him onto it, and the bus rolled on. The entire episode took about an hour.

He seemed to be mostly OK. I am not sure how serious the injury actually was. I don’t want to question his sincerity, but once, years ago, S and I were in a similar situation. An old lady fell coming out of the subway, and it caused a huge scene. To me it just looked like she slipped, but she was acting as if she was seriously hurt. A subway employee came over and offered to call an ambulance, but told her that if this was not a serious emergency, the ambulance could be very expensive, in the $10,000 ballpark. Miraculously the woman then could walk completely fine, and she left the station on her own accord. I think she was extremely embarrassed and played up her “injury” to mask the fact that she just flat out fell. I got this same feeling from the man with the prosthetic leg. But, who can say? Also, I’m not sure why he was even trying to go up the steps to the back of the bus. Almost the entire front was available. It’s very strange.

Anyway, work is going OK. I’m getting extremely annoyed with the IT support, but I was forewarned that it’s not very good. It’s an adjustment for me coming from the US which I’m finding actually has relatively good tech support. Everything here is do it yourself, which is inefficient if you are not a computer whiz (which I’m not). I need to install this program on my computer to start a project, but it fails whenever I try to do so, for some reason. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer why. There is a guy in the department who is really sharp with computers, so I’m going to ask him for help on Monday, I think. I’m completely blocked from working on the project (my main project) until this is resolved. I can work on my side project for now, but soon I need to get back to my main project.

OK, time to go. Gotta hit the gym.

PS -- Speaking of ribs, here's a classic scene from I'm Gonna Git You Sucka featuring a very young Chris Rock.

Entry 19: Another One Rides the Bus

S is back now, which is good. (I always know when she is back because my stuff is never where I leave it, and my various electronic wires are always wound around themselves and stored somewhere neatly. I had to ask S not to do this, because when I unwind the wire it has a tendency to twist itself into a spiral and it’s incredibly irritating to use, especially if it’s for headphones.) I’m back into my regular routine: wake up, get some breakfast and coffee, take the bus to work, work, have lunch, look at fantasy baseball stats, work some more, take the bus to the gym, workout, walk home, have some dinner, do a leisure activity, go to sleep. On Thursdays, we usually go out to eat. On the weekends, we might get wild and have a few glasses of wine and look for a movie to stream online. By the way, Hollywood has a great piracy deterrent – make really crappy movies. Date Night, The A-Team, The Karate Kid, Knight and Day, The Killers, don’t worry I’m not stealing any of those. I don’t understand how these movies make any money. You would literally have to pay me to watch one of them.

Anyway, I’ve been riding the bus long enough that I’ve got my technique down pat. I get on fairly early in the route, so I usually have my pick of seats. First, I always sit near the back. Overweight people are much less likely to make it to the back (especially since there a few steps to navigate), so if I end up sharing a seat with somebody I probably won’t be squashed. Second, I always sit on the west side of the bus to avoid the morning sun shining in my face. Third, I usually try to avoid the seats above the wheels for legroom purposes. One thing I won’t do is put my bag next to me to dissuaded people from sitting there. Society can’t function if people have this type of mentality.

On the bus, I see the same people over and over. I’ve never talked to any of them of course, but I recognize them. There is a group of three guys about 16 that are always going on about Family Guy or South Park or something like that. A typical overheard bit of conversation is something like this [said very quickly while giggling]: “Then he says, ‘There’s a bear in my cereal!’ and there is a bear in his cereal, but you thought it would be poison or something, but it’s a bear, and then she runs off with the bear, and they are in a hotel on the bed and she says to the bear, ‘I wanna go out. You never take me out anymore.’ and he says ‘I just killed somebody today, I’m tired. You know, this is gonna be a really long trip Suzy if you don’t cut the crap!’, so she looks all sad and then the bear pokes her with his toe and says, ‘Love you.’” Then they all crack up in unison. The funniest part to me is that I always know exactly what they are referring to.

There are also some schoolgirls that ride the bus who are a few years younger than the boys. I use the term “schoolgirls”, because that’s what they look like. The traditional plaid skirt and polo shirt uniform is quite prevalent here. There is one girl who is taller and prettier than the others and you can tell that she’s the unquestioned leader of the group. She thinks she is so cool.

There is a man, who I’ve only seen on a handful of occasions, who is always wearing a scarf on his head. I have no idea why. At first I thought it was because it was cold or raining, but I’ve seen him several times on warm, clear days. Then I thought maybe it’s a religious thing, but I don’t know of any religion in which men wear head scarves. Plus, it doesn’t look like anything religious. It looks like he bought a checker board-pattern scarf at Macy’s and every morning he wraps it around his head and ties a knot under his chin before leaving the house. It’s very strange.

There is this other guy who, although I’ve never met him before, annoys me to no end. His style gets under my nerves. He looks to be in his late-40s, early 50s. He has salt and pepper hair that is cropped short except for a thin, long braid that ends just below his nape. (It sorta looks like he is always wearing a coonskin hat.) He has a touch-of-gray goatee and two hoop earrings in his left ear. He is always wearing black heeled boots, black jeans, and a black denim jacket. He sits cross-legged in the front of the bus. I find the way he carries himself very pretentious. I have never talked to this man and still he bothers me. By the way, I realize this is a terrible attitude to have. People say first impressions are important, but in my experience they are also extremely inaccurate. There have been many people who, like this man, I was initially put off by who ended up being really cool once I actually got to know them. Plus, people have told me their first impressions of me and I have heard things, on more than one occasion, like the following: very serious, shy, republican, and frat boy meathead, none of which are even remotely close to describing me (I hope). I guess the moral is don't go by first impressions. Even though this man seems like a colossal tool to me, I would keep an open mind, if for some reason we were to ever have an interaction beyond me mentally mocking him from afar.

OK, time to end this entry. S wants to watch an episode of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” (we are starting season two, I’m still lukewarm on it) then we are going to a barbecue. The couple who’s hosting it is apparently slow roasting pork as I write. It’s a bad time to be a vegetarian – sorry S.

(Here's a link to a live performance of "Weird" Al doing Another One Rides the Bus. Do you think Weird Al can get women? I mean he's a famous musician and all, but still.)