Black Hawk Down

I had hippie parents. Christmas gifts included things like “Lets Grow Bean Sprouts at Home and Be Healthy™” home gardening kits (this is true). Not an action man or BB Gun in sight. The closest I got to a projectile-based toy was looiing a clod at Travis, my best friend. I wore corduroy dungarees til I was 10. The folks ran off to India every now and then, returning with even more dubious hippie presents, and kaftans smelling of patchouli.

In order to right the injustices of my childhood deprivations, Nick and I bought a remote control helicopter a few days back. Just a dinky one, about the size of a dishing up spoon.

Bored with buzzing Frankie (Labrador) and Stankie (Pug puppy), I went for the altitude record, the yardstick being the huge oak tree shaped like Grandpa Simpson’s head (a peyote-weighted observation, made some time ago by The Fat Guy with the Beard).

The ‘copter shot up, quicker than a child’s fumbled balloon vanishing to a dot in the sky above the fairground- and vanished behind the tree.

It’s been 4 days. I have posted flyers all over the neighbourhood. None of the local kids has claimed the R100 reward. Black Hawk is still down.

What to Do When Your Ex Hasn’t Got Fat

I had lunch with an ex yesterday. It’s been 9 years. She hasn’t got fat. This is a big, big problem. In an ideal world, all my exs will be bigger than my postcode, with bad skin and thick ankles. In an ideal world, you can just walk up and say; ’ Wow. It’s been ages. What have you been doing all this time... APART FROM EATING?!’

Better that than to see them and have your heart somersault like a flipped pancake. This ex still has sea blue eyes that makes time hiccup, leaving you wondering just where you are and what exactly you were saying. Coherently formed sentences vanish on your tongue quicker than a snowflake on a frying pan. If this wasn’t enough, there’s the thought ‘we’ve seen each other naked!’ blipping in and out of the static, shrill and sudden as an alarm clock in a biscuit tin.

Some people's company has no shelf life. Conversation's easy like an old well-worn mix tape, where you both know what song’s coming next. In a heartbeat you’re finishing each other’s sentences, swapping obscure jokes and giggling at them like school kids passing notes under the desk in the in class. That sort of empathy gets scarcer as you get older, and seeing them makes you rue the ones that got away, or regret those you discarded.

I guess once a relationship starts, on some level it never ends. It just carries on. Maybe you got married, maybe you broke up earlier than you did, maybe you shagged her sister. Whatever. Somewhere someplace else, those feelings never stop, they keep just going on an on, like a million flickering TV shows bouncing off the satellites, beaming into space.

indie crumpets: Continued

2. Björk

“Aye lee-iv under dee wutah,
Weeth the leetle feeshiss
All sweemming like aurora boree-awlis
Prittee like starsss”

Accompanied by what often sounds like spoons, forks, and a drum machine being flushed down the toilet, accompanied by a teddy bear popping bubble wrap.

Who would have thought a facial mix of 14th century Mongolian warlord and hamster would produce such a trouser-bursting result?


3. Kim Deal

"First I'm going to piss like a racehorse, then I'm gonna dance like a black woman”
(after Pixies concert)

The vocals of 'Gigantic’ sound like black coffee and sandpaper coming out of a pitch black room. She fronted the Breeders, the best all girl band since, well, ever. Sadly the years have been less than kind, and she’s packed on more pounds and looks less and less like her voice sounds. Ms. Deal now looks like my 50-something grade 7 French teacher, Mrs. Nesbit, who resembled a labrador with a weight problem. Sigh.

Satan in a Furry Pug-sized Jumpsuit

My digsmate Nick is tired of being my pug puppy Stankie's bitch. (Someone) told him that if you bite a pug's ear, it calms down and shows you respect from then on. He tried this last night. Stankie yelped, looked at him for a fraction, then said; 'Game on, mutherfucker!' and beat seven shades of shit out of him.

Nick has returned to being Stankie's personal whipping boy. I can hear the screams now this morning as she leaps onto his bed, waking him with a bite on the face.

Nick has turned to The Good Book for comfort; namely this passage:
'2 Corinthians 12:7 - Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, and it shall pass through this world in cute pug form.'

Amen.