How to spend lottery winnings

Life's a pointless experience if you don't leave the world without making it better or having someone remember you for something incredible that you achieved. Lest we forget, right?!

My dream is to win tattslotto and I don't at all think that's unreasonable. It's achievable and something to work towards. It means I'd actually have to take a moment in time out of my week to log on to the lotto website and purchase a ticket online. Yep, that's right folks, it's that easy to take the gamble these days. Nothing is more conducive of a reason to treat myself to this dream than another day in the office. I can't wait to win!

So I guess the question is "what's this guy going to be remembered for?". Well I'll tell you now it won't be the generosity of sharing my winnings with a bunch of people who'll inevitably forget where they got the money from and move on merrily about their daily routines with their newest modern conveniences. No sir! Here are a couple of quick ideas....

Inventions

- The Gravity Free Suit

This amazing invention will be a must have and will almost certainly bring about world peace. I think I should have my hand up high already to be nominated for a Nobel Prize after just thinking of this one.

The concept is a modified space suit. The difference being in this instance that the usual atmospheric gasses that are produced within the suit to simulate that of the earth will be spiked with an added dosage of tetrahydrochloride. A world where people all wear a suit like this will surely be a better place. Complacency will replace feud, greed and violence and everyone will think they're weightless and living on the moon. How could you be any happier??? 

   +  =



- Neck Bypass Duct

OK, so the gravity free suit invention comes with it's flaws, I'll agree. We'd be living in a world more so obese than it currently is and that'd be no good for anyone. It'd be hard to put on a bunch of weight snacking on space food when you have the munchies I'm sure, but alas it never hurts to pay careful attention to detail. This is where this next nifty contribution to humanity comes in. 

Eating food is awesome and perhaps one of my favorite pass times. The problem is I get full. Being bloated and feeling sick in the stomach is unpleasant and inevitably puts the brakes on a decent eating session. Not to mention of course the health implications of stuffing yourself full to the brim at every opportunity with the tasty things on the menu (the good stuff is always bad for you).

I figure why not stimulate all of the food loving senses (aside from that bloated, sick feeling) and have a digestive tract tracheotomy??? You smell the food, it excites your visual senses, then the pleasure of tasting and eating it and then before it hits your stomach for precessing it's expressed from your body via tubing to a waste container. When used in conjunction with the gravity free suit it just makes sense. Your waste needs to be stored somewhere anyway.

...Once my inventions have been fine tuned to perfection I'll set myself up in a sweet office that will make google's head quarters seem insignificant. An elevator will be installed that will take you to the rooftop which will be the only entry to the building. Once you step out of the elevator you will find yourself on a platform not unlike an Olympic high diving springboard. Clearly no one in their right mind would be without a gravity free suit by this stage, which will mean leaping into the underwater office will make complete rational sense. 

The office itself will be fitted out in much the same format as any normal office with the underwater factor being the only exception. All the employees will have a cheerful disposition and the standard three formal warnings before termination of employment will stand enforced only upon bitch/arsehole like behavior. 

When the day of my end does come about my smiling face entombed beneath my space helmet shall be cast into the fiery depths of an active volcano or into the ocean amongst a school of great white sharks. 

- END TRANSMISSION -

        

Just one of them days…

Subtle as a sledgehammer – This ironic, amusing quotation is made reference to someone who acts without finesse

Normally I wake to the sound of an annoying alarm tone that I have on my phone. If I hear that same tone during the day it makes me feel ill. I assimilate it to the kind of treatment served in Stanley Cubrick’s Clockwork Orange. My minds negative association to actually having to wake up and come back to reality from my Neverland experiences is astounding! This morning’s wake up call would have welcomed my alarm tone.

The house next door to mine has been a work in progress now since the week we moved in. Some things take time, granted, but two years to build a thirty square home is a little excessive. Most of the construction has been undertaken on weekends and public holidays which has been annoying enough, but at least most of the noise has been kept to a minimum until at least 9:00am.

This morning was just the perfect icing on the annoying cake. 6:30am, twenty minutes until my next dose of soul bashing alarm, I was woken to the sound of a sledgehammer thumping on the side wall of the house. It wasn’t just one or two love taps, it turned into at least forty five minutes of solid weapon wielding. Usually I’m a pretty tolerant guy and quite reserved and reasonable when someone is a little inconsiderate, but 6:30am!!! Two years and they can’t wait another couple of hours before they go disturbing the neighborhood. Needless to say I kitted up in my most imposing attire (lycra) and had a little chat with our noisy neighbor before heading to work. I used a little tool of my own to get my point across, I like to call it sarcasm. I’m sure my complaints fell upon deaf ears. I should’ve noted down his registration number so I could track him down. I’d see his sledgehammer and raise him a jack, his 6:30am and aim for 4:00am. What a coq!

While I’m on a rantpage; also ranking on the coq-o-meter…

·         The chap that decided to flick a cigarette butt out of his stationary vehicle at the instant I rode past. You’re a scumbag (refer to previous blog)

·         Professor Scumbaggy who won’t answer my calls so I can repair the internet connection to the office. Forget the fact that we’re not receiveing any business related emails of potential importance, what the hell am I supposed to do now??? My job???

·         King Nothing (see prior post) also gets a mention for his ignorance with the whole internet connection scenario. Listening to a 10min monologue on how he’s gone about trying to fix the problem led to clarification that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing with computers. A secondary failure on his behalf is that if he let me drive the server for five minutes rather than maintaining his elitist status as “the managing director who ever doubts the ability and integrity of his “scumbag” minions”, I inevitably would have the problem rectified without paying an IT consultant.

Tomorrow the sun will rise, then it’ll set, all the time in between beings roaming the earth will make life harder for one another in the hope of becoming the alpha male.

…well, until next time, ta ta    

TGI Friday!

... yes, thank God, it's finally here. 3:18pm Friday afternoon and the end of the working week is so close, yet so far. 42min to sweat it out (literally, as the office cooling system is absolutely rubbish) before I can hop on my bike and ride off into the sunset. A horse would probably be more fitting, but for now I'll saddle up my triple butted chromolly steel framed Malvern Star and attempt to squeeze out a few more drops of last night's drinking binge from my pores.

The word about the office today has been "scumbag".

scum·bag/ˈskəmˌbag/

Noun: A contemptible or objectionable person.

 

... in the world of construction this term is generally used affectionately when in reference to a trades person, and more often than not, a plumber. It's amazing how productively one manages to exercise talents of insubordination when in a workplace of totalitarian rule. The shared office space I inhibit is often rife with explosive displays of creativity and laughter. Idiosyncrasies of our 'respected' superiors are thrown into unlikely social scenarios and arrogance and ignorance exaggerated for the relief of daily monotony and distraction from any form of productivity.

 

The number for today is "too many".

 

Here's an equation for you; two consecutive nights of overconsumption of beer - a normal night sleep or two + a humid, sweaty, uncomfortable working environment = a disgruntled and unproductive employee (refer to word for the day).

 

...15min and counting. Make it stop. Actually no, speed it up a little. What the hell is the clock doing???? There must be something wrong with it. Seemingly it's not moving. Aaaaarrrrrrrgh!!!!

 

Signing off 3:48pm. 12min to go. HELP ME!

Forest Jeep 24hr MTB Enduro

Slow Cooked Stuffed Squid Tubes

Ingredients:

Sauce

-         Tomato Puree (Pasata)

-         Canned whole peeled tomatoes or Fresh tomatoes peeled & deseeded

-         Onion (Diced finely)

-         Garlic (Peeled and sliced finely)

-         Olive Oil

-         Fresh Red Chili (Sliced finely – deseeded if you can’t handle heat)

-         Vegetable/Fish Stock

-         Salt & Black Pepper

Stuffing

-         Squid Tubes (Thawed if frozen)

-         Baguette or French Stick

-         Parsley (Coarsely Chopped)

-         Basil (Roughly Torn)

-         1x Lemon (Zest & Juice)

-         Olive Oil

-         1 Cup Dry White Wine (Pinot Gris/Sav Blanc)

-         Black Olives (Pitted & Chopped)

-         Anchovy Fillets (Optional)

Method (Stuffing Mix):

1. Preheat oven to 230degC
2. Cut French stick into 2cm slices and place into oven for 5-10min (until lightly browned and dry) and remove to cool.
3. Process or pound bread slices into a slightly chunky crumb consistency and add to a mixing bowl with lemon zest, lemon juice, white wine, parsley, basil, olives & anchovy. Mix all ingredients through and add olive oil until stuffing mix starts to stick together. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Stuff squid tubes with stuffing mix. Ends can be sealed easily with toothpicks or skewers. Stuffing should not leak from tubes once sealed and does not need to be packed in too tightly as the squid tubes will shrink in the cooking process.

Method (Sauce):

1. Heat olive oil in a medium pot and sauté onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper and cook until onions caramelize. Lower heat and add chili.
2. Add tomato puree and whole peeled tomatoes to pot and mix through.
3. Place stuffed squid in the sauce before it heats. Add a splash of white wine and stock until the tubes are covered with liquid.
4. Cover pot with lid and ensure liquid is heated slowly to a simmer. Once simmering cook covered on low heat for 1hr or more.
5. Serve with nice crusty bread and plenty of the sauce. Hopefully the bowl comes back mopped clean.

King Nothing

It's not every day that you hear something that's absolutely absurd. I guess that would only be if you were a "normal" person in a "normal" world. Fortunately I live on a planet where the completely ridiculous is more so "normal".

The day began as normal, answering the first phone call of the day wearing little more than a pair of lycra shorts, some amber shades and a circus-like shirt. Yep, "normal".

As things do, they happened, and one thing led to another. Things then spun out of control and the seemingly "normal" day plunged to a status that can only be described as a crisis. The managing director's pen ink had mysteriously been changed from blue to red!.... "Stop the tape!"....  

Needless to say tampering with the managing director's pen would bring the world as we know it to an end. Oh the humanity! According to the other managing director, such a heinous act of in-subordination and disrespect is a crime punishable by none other than termination on the spot. Clearly not  an overreaction by any measure. 

I think that perhaps the point of hilarity in the whole pen scenario is that the phenomenon remains inexplicable. None of the accused were responsible and the earth still spins upon it's axis as it did before the mysterious change in colour of the pen ink. There may be a little red pen on a document somewhere, but life goes on without consequence.

Liberty of Conviction

America was pretty much how I expected it to be. Big, ridiculous, stinky and full of terrible food, beer, wine & coffee (all my loves in life). with an exception or two (San Fran mainly). NYC was the epitome of my expectations, especially the stinky part. Managed to see a gig headlined by “The Greenhorns” and fell in love with a little bottle I like to call Sailor Jerry (spiced rum – amazing stuff RRP $20 in USA, $79.99 in AUS. Needless to say it’ll be a fond memory). I rode a bull at a bar in NYC too which was pretty cool. Showed the rest of those city slickers how it was done.  

With some local knowledge & guidance from a friend and ex colleague, I managed to find my way around to some great Mexican, the best sausage and pickle I’ve ever eaten and great beer in San Fran. Managed to do a bit of riding there too which was awesome. I needed to, as I put on about 5kg in three weeks over in the obesity capital. Hired a car in San Fran to drive to Vegas and managed to smash it in the first hour of driving abroad whilst reverse parallel parking. Turns out sitting on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road is a little more challenging than I gave credit. Cornelius Thorn, ex-marine and the driver of a gold Lincoln, was far from impressed.

New Orleans was amazing I must admit. The music was second to none and we were there during Southern Decadence (a gay mardigras). Needless to say I donned my gayest outfit, formed a posy with all the lads and hit the streets. We had an awesome time.

Bourbon St

in New Orleans is party town 24/7!!!

Frenchman St

is a close second. Live jazz bars all the way along a mile stretch. I saw the best drummer I’ve seen play at a sweet little bar called “the Spotted Cat”. The albino alligator at the swamp was pretty cool and there’s nothing quite like seeing a larger than life redneck almost get eaten by a 13foot alligator whilst trying to feed it marsh mellows!

Vegas was a joke.. The highlight for me was playing with a little friend I like to call “Desert Eagle”, unfortunately not the .50, but the .44 was hard enough to handle on the gun range. There’s nothing like a shop that you can just rock up to and point out a gun and they’ll give you ammo and a range to shoot it in no questions asked. No ID check, no blood alcohol/drug check, it’s just here you go, have fun! Went VIP to a club in Vegas too which was apparently a good experience. I say apparently as I had a date with Sailor Jerry’s good pal Captain Morgan and that left me passed out in my hotel room before long. I woke to a scene not too different from the hangover after that night and my quote for the day after that I stole from “The Hangover”, “we don’t remember anything, remember!”. The day following I ate the most disgustingly, filthy meal of the trip and the locals call it the mac & steak sub. I’ll let you guys put two and two together. The only thing more heart attack inducing than that was the cajun bloody mary I sent back to the bar on a Mississippi river cruise in New Orleans. It tasted like a cup of olive brine, tomato paste and pepper, maybe something like you’d make as a dare when you were a kid unsupervised in an all you can eat restaurant.

LA….. Well that to me was just a giant stink hole. I gave Disneyland a miss after sporting one of the worst hangover’s of the trip after visiting the Trubadour for an Omar Rodriguez Lopez concert. Only two of our group of 13 went to see this gig and we managed to sneak into the band after party post-gig by posing as roadies. I took a happy snap of my partner in crime with Omar not long before we met each other again out the front of the venue not realizing that we’d both managed to sneak into the after party. Ah, well, win some, lose some. Stoned from the passive smoke and drunk as a couple of skunks, I’m not really sure how we managed to find our way back to our accommodation considering we had no idea what the address was.

I almost forgot to mention the haunted hotel we stayed in at Pismo Beach. Weird things happened in that place! I thought I was going crazy! I woke up dead on 530am to the sound of an old rusty sprung mattress being jumped on, when I looked at the end of my bed there was a dark shadow that jumped off the end. I thought I was probably dreaming so I got up, washed my face and went back to bed. Just before I fell asleep again there was the sound of tapping finger nails on my bed head. Needless to say there wasn’t a whole lot more sleep that morning. Thank god it was only a stop-over location on our road trip. I figured the rest of my crew would think I was nuts if I mentioned it, so I kept my experience to myself, well until I get from my room to the elevator anyway. I merely commented “I think this place is haunted” to one of the lasses I was travelling with who instantly thought I was taking the piss (how unlike me). She asked her man if he’d mentioned anything to me to check if I was serious and when she realized I wasn’t making a joke she told me everyone had seen strange things in the night.

To sum it up, it was an experience. I don’t think I’m in any hurry to get back to America but I think everyone would have to do it once in a lifetime. If I lived in NYC I’d be on the cover of a Fat Admirers magazine, if I lived in Vegas I’d probably buy a desert eagle and shortly after be thrown in prison for gunning down one of those schleps in bright t-shirts flicking and handing out cards for female escorts, if I lived in New Orleans my liver would die in a week after a few too many “Hurricanes” and if I lived in LA I’d buy myself a leather pilots hat and goggles and drive like a kamikaze from one side of the city to the other and die a horrible death taking many with me. San Fran, well I could probably live there forever but I think that’d be done in vain as I think I’ve got most of the bases covered here in Melbourne. If I open a Sausage store like Rosamunde Sausage Grill in Melbourne that sells cool T-shirts and is next to a sweet Mexican Restaurant called Pancho Villas I think I’ll have it all.        

 

**INSERT TITLE HERE**

QUOTE OF THE DAY: **Well laden church with the sombre mood of a funeral proceeding. Dialogue audible to the extent of no longer being a private conversation ** "You see that little guy... Down syndrome. I work with people like that. Isn't he gorgeous?!"

OUTTAKES: Allow me to once again set the scene... The modern day funeral, generally free of pomp & ceremony, aims to accommodate those of all beliefs, probably due to the fact that friendship is not religious. With that in mind the display of the day maintained the traditional undertaking of a catholic mass in it's entire glory.

The priest stands... the second priest stands... the brother stands. Main priest raises his open hands to the heavens and waits for a response... A group of five promptly rise to the cue. Many turn to see what commotion has unfolded aft. Awkwardly pockets of people with an air of uncertainty rise to attention. Most remain seated hoping nobody will notice.

The Lord is my shepherd... unless no one else is following... Time for Vatican III???

APPLICATION: To apply, or not to apply??? That is the question. There is indeed more than one way to arrive at a dream. I find the best way is to remain still in a quiet, dark room with the warmth of bedding and the comfort of a good mattress. This is what I determine to be the "easy way". The next easiest way is to prostitute my personality and talent, or be it lack there of, to a television program.

Masterchef 2011...

....here we go

...what better place to start than with a good old fashioned whinge??? As I manage to wind up the fourth consecutive twelve hour day of love (note sarcasm here), I hear the recently somewhat familiar sound of yet another miserable day of weather. I guess a decade of drought deserves the first real winter I've experienced since I've been "senior" enough to care, or in fact store the memory into a vacant corner in my long-term memory. I can build the tone of my day around it's weather. Adjectives such as cold, turbulent, uncomfortable, miserable and erratic spring to my now incoherent mind.

My day began with sunshine. I don't intend to sound like a mushy git, but seeing my girl for the first time this week for breakfast produced a strange sensation around the extremities of my mouth otherwise referred to as a smile. It was in fact probably one of two mutually appreciated moments of human interaction I've been involved with today and I think I'll choose to take that memory with me into tomorrow. The remaining moments of my day will fall victim to the self-imposed sensory frontal lobe lobotomy I shall perform on myself after I leave the office..... BEER!

Sunshine faded away the closer I came to arriving at work. Encountering belligerent twits who had chosen to share the roads with me and the seemingly never ending taunts of consecutive red lights intensified the closer I drove to the industrial estate. It's amazing how challenging human beings can find it to show their fellow man/woman consideration and courtesy! Everyone is travelling in the same direction on the left hand side of an Australian road, everyone is probably running two minutes behind schedule and that one car length you managed to get in front by cutting someone else off saved you no more than a second or two in the grand scheme of things and as angry as you are that the person you cut off sounded their horn at you, they're probably just as annoyed. If you took a deep breath, adjusted your speed to the flow of the traffic and merged like you cared about the well being of those around you as much as your own you may have spent two seconds and have saved a couple of  points on your, and every other surrounding driver's next blood pressure test... ASSHOLE!

The turbulent, cold and erratic weather developed when I turned my computer on and assumed the position I had left not thirteen hours prior. There's something entirely deflating about spending every daylight hour with your head to the grindstone for two weeks straight and still receiving requests for work that hasn't even been looked at yet. Ah, the pleasures of working for "the man". "The man" is a somewhat unrealistic individual (or two perhaps) that anticipates an individual to be capable of doing the tasks sufficient to keep at least one other poorly informed employee busy for the duration of a working period. One day someone will surely recognise a hidden talent that they will throw money at me to perform and I will not even need to try to make the almighty buck that will fund me living a life of doing the things I feel are important. Food, music, international culture, cycling, fitness in general  - that all makes more sense to me. I suggest we all reflect on how brilliantly perfect a simplistic existence could be... CAVEMAN!

The saving grace for this day of discomfort and misery is that it's one less day before I embark upon an adventure of epic proportion. 11 nights of slumber will have me delivered to the day of departure where the Liberty of Conviction Tour 2010 will begin and for three weeks I will leave this place behind.


DAILY STATISTICS  
Mutual Smiles = 2
Hung up on best friend = 1
Times I used profanity = >this guy can remember
People I complained to that didn't particularly care = 3+
Times the phone rang and I didn't feel like the guy from Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork Orange" = 0
People encountered too full on self importance to listen to anyone else = 2

I'd rate that as a success...

CONCLUSION - The weather sucked nuts today, so did the general day itself and tomorrow will certainly be an improvement!