Boxing Day

Beers, cricket... Boxing Day.

Posted with LifeCast

When Goth Defended The Main

I remember the day well. It was on the muddy delta of Operation Hastings in a critical GA ladder match that was as I recall, a do or die affair as far as TEA's continued presence in the pointy end of the ladder was concerned. The usual feared collection of TEA warriors was assembled, having practiced the map for hours with each player an integral and well-oiled cog in the machinery of the TEA behemoth that was poised to tear the arse out of whatever hapless opposition had made the dire miscalculation of challenging us on our "home ground". Goth had also turned up, having clicked the wrong Start Menu item and launched BFV accidently.

The customary pre-match douchbaggery consisting of various nade-to-arse combinations and other inventive teamkilling faded away as the countdown to the main event approached, and serious game-faces emerged. Splado and Jay ran to their Hueys, Tsunami tongued the throat of his smoking LAW, and Tossed alt-tabbed out to google BRDM while I jogged lazily to the "Peugeot of the Skies", aka the Coirsair. It was then that we noticed Goth entangled in some barbed wire, twisting and turning with sloth-like agility to free himself as fierce deficits of motor agility were brought to bear on the keyboard of our unfortunate teammate. As I slowly performed my relaxing pre-game ritual of stroking myself in the cockpit, I noted with relief the exhaustion of Goth's health bar and inevitable death, since a respawn would free him from his wiry coffin.

TS cracked with a few last minute strategies: "Todes, STFU about the accuracy", "Admiral get a REAL CLOSE look inside those Mi8's", "tooly, the server password is still Tango India Delta Yankee" and some anciliary remarks about the best routes to press our offence. Defence of the crucial main base wasn't really considered, since during any match on this map it was virtually a given. In previous matches, it had been possible to mount an impregnable defence of the main armed with nothing more than a revolver, with some bored backliners amusing themselves by doing it with a plantation knife only. On one occasion, Dave completed the objective without equipping a weapon at all, havingly simply run up behind some lone attactker and bunted them into the muddy stream to drown. A recent patch had introduced a fearsome Quad-4 0.50cal cannon mounted dead centre, with sweeping and far-reaching lines to every conceivable enfilade in proximity, making what was already a dead easy job one that was impossible to get wrong. Or so we thought...

As the pre-came countdown timer reached 0, I hit the throttle and felt the lethargic bucket of metallic crap that was the Corsair slowly think about lumbering forward. Zipping up my pants, I noted the figure of Goth sitting happily in the Quad-4, a ridiculous and idiotic expression pasted across his face as he gayly alternated between attempting to shoot a smiley face into the side of a hut, and attempting to shoot down a cloud. The hueys were already off, with Splado filling TS with excited chatter about the effect of the upcoming kills on his stats, and the strains of "Ride of the Valykaries" echoing through the hlls. By the time my shit bucket had unstuck itself from the runway, the first two flags were already ours, and NVA corpses stained the ground. I sighted the enemy mi8 on the radar and set of on an itercepting bearing, wondering idly if I'd make the distance before the round would already be over. It was all going to plan; a beautiful and well constructed plan that couldn't possibly fail to propel us to the top of the leader board and whatever glories awaited beyond.

It was then that the first hint of trouble surfaced. At first it wasn't even really apparent. The NVA dead were still scrolling healthily up the side of the screen, but back at base it was all a bit too quiet. Usually by this stage, Goth had asked at least one question, whether it be "Hey guys, what's the key to reload" or "How to I get in a vehicle again", but TS was unusually dead. I lazilly rolled the clunky tub of metal arse that was the Corsair over to one side and looked down towards out main, and there was Goth still happily sitting in the Quad-4, spinning it round and round and round like a spinning top, encased in his own little amusing whirly world. "Fair enough" I thought, since you make your own fun when you're the full-back and it's not like home defence was exactly a challenge.

Then we heard it. On TS came the barely audible "Hey fellas..." in a soft, squeaky whine. An icy chill clutched at my heart as TS exploded with a chorus of anxious questions about what was wrong. As I bored down on the enemy mi8, I could see a Huey far below me throw itself into a steep turn, and swing around to point the main, heading there at full throttle. [TEA]Goth knife [BoTM]BuM_punCher appeared in stark pink on the screen, that being Goth's designated colour in Splado's BFV buddy colouring system. In unison, teammates yelled profanities into their microphones and reversed direction, streaming back towards our beleagured base, now some miles behind us. "Umm, sorry fellas" was drowned out as strategies quickly shifted from powerhouse offence to scrambling defence, a defence that should never have been called into play. As I heaved the lardy blob of barely flying vagina that was my aircraft into a tight sweeping turn back to base, Splado's chopper flashed past. Tellingly it was sans-music. Things were serious.

Seconds later, the point was lost. Our main respawn point had gone. With engines screaming I peered through the veil of mist conferred on me by my ancient 4800ti GFX card, and saw a lone NVA soldier teabagging the deceased goth, the yellow scrotum of victory being repeatedly swallowed by the gaping cakehole of defeat. Waves of NVA spurted from their new spawn point faster than Shadowrunner's children and I knew it was over. Below me, SA-7's thudded into Splado's chopper as Jay bailed out into the muddy river. Dave's gunship thundered over the base with guns blazing, but became a fireball as the captured quad-4 peppered it with holes. I aimed my lumbering truck's nose at the mass of enemy and pressed the button as 4 rockets flashed past me from behind from the pursuing mi8. Another 4 condemned me to a fireball of death seconds later. It was over. Without our vehicles, we were left to spawn in the middle of a muddy ricefield miles from the action, or atop a remote pagoda on the verges of the map.

It was the quickest recorded TEA loss on any map, and the world record fastest loss on Hastings. Splado was contacted by Today Tonight a few days after, but we closed ranks and refused to comment. "Dumbass Loses Main on Hastings" stories started appearing on Digg and on BFV websites, but we held our resolve. We determined to use this as a learning experience, to profit from what was on the face of it, an embarrassing and soul destroying loss to an inferior opponent on an unloseable map. We'd refine our tactics and personnel configurations and be a better team for it. We resolved to introduce a buddy system for Goth, whereby a teammate would tag him at all times during ladder matches to steer him away from potential threats, and curb his propensity to run off the edge of the map in pursuit of imaginary butterfiles or rainbows that only he could see. Above all we introduced a system where player skills would be matched with in-game roles, with Goth being given special low-risk tasks only. After much deliberation we evolved a list of Goth-friendly jobs, the first of which we'd try out in our next ladder match a week away. We were playing Recaiming Hue and our main base was a large square building at the rear of the action. We'd give Goth the foolproof task of spreading C4 over the roof to discourage an attack that in all likeliness would never eventuate. The key skill requisites were the ability to see, and knowledge of gravity. What could possibly go wrong...?

Manila

So, I had to go to Manila last month to check out this software package. I was up at 5am, and then flew to Sydney for an alleged 11am flight. Got delayed three hours while they fixed something on the plane, so we walked around Mascott airport looking for any evidence to support the massive signs advertising the fact that a $500m upgrade is in place. There was none other than a few exposed ceiling spaces and the giant signs. Maybe the signs cost that much. Anyway, if there's one delay I don't mind, it's when they delay a flight to fix the plane. Nobody wants to be at 39,000 feet above the Indian Ocean when the plane falls apart because they didn't give the glue enough time to dry.

Eventually we got on the plane and I took my allocated seat next to the other guy from the same office as me, Steve. My sweet talkin' of the Qantas check-in chick obviously paid dividends in for form of the massive allocation of legroom in our emergency row - BONUS! Sat through the obligatory special safety chat that comes with the territory. This consisted of memorising "SFO! Smoke, Fire, Obstruction! Check, Chuck, Check! Check (for SFO), Chuck (the door), Check (that the safety slide has fully inflated)".

"Yep, got it!" I advised the overtly homosexual cabin crew guy as he clapped his hands in front of his face excitedly and then scurried away to serve my CEO and the vendor rep who were already necking wine a couple of seats further up as we backed out to the runway.

Fast forward five hours later and I was the same number of of VBs down. Our mincing cabin lackey was trained by that stage and arrived perkily with a fresh can and a plastic cup before each "DONG!" of the call button had finished echoing around the cabin. My executive collegues up the cabin were also ticking along nicely, filling the jet with uproars of laughter at the end of each volumous politically incorrect joke. My CEO stumbled back to see how we were doing. I nimbly alt-tabbed from the episode of LOST I was watching to the functional requirements specification spreadsheet I'd opened and minimised in preperation earlier. "Remember guysss" he slurred loudly, spittle fizzing from his mouth throughout the lingering 's', "let's have some fun on this one as well, eh!". As the warm, halitosis-tinged aroma of merlot wafted over my face, his meaty hand thudded into my shoulder and with a brisk loud "HAH!" he was off again, teetering back up the aisle to his seat. I rescued my tinny of VB from its place of hasty concealment, re-fired LOST and on we cruised.

Three hours later, we landed in Manila. It was pitch dark and there were a lot of Asians around. I pointed to a nearby group and nodded to my buddy - "Filipinos". He nodded in sombre agreement. We guessed Manila and hence we, were somewhere in Asia. We proceeded to customs and realised we'd completely stuffed our declarations. Hastily we filled them out in illegible scrawls as the line slowly snaked forward. I whipped out my passport. Less that two days prior, I had a different passport. My old passport. I loved that old passport, wrinkled and battered and full of stamps that bore happy remembrence of past international travel, including evidence of my famed "8 hours in Auckland". The old passport still had 5 good months left on it, but by some retarded rule, that's really a fake expiry date. The effective expiry date is six months before the fake expiry date. Apparently it's to cover you in case you have to stay overseas longer. We were going for 36 hours so my old one would have been perfect. As if was, at the last minute I had had to front the immigrations bureau in Adelaide the day before we left to get a fast-track passport! This was the same as the normal passport that usually takes a couple of weeks. A priority one usually takes two days. We got ours in two hours, sweet! Clutching said passport, we passed through customs and an officer felt my balls. Apparently frisking is a national sport in the Philipines.

It was 10pm local time. We stumbled around dragging travel bags to and fro, looking for the limo. A Tarago thing rocked up which would have to do. We piled in and headed to the hotel. Manila is typical of Asian countries where road rules are more suggestions than rules. Most situations can be navigated by honking the horn and flashing the high beams or rubbing bumpers with other vehicles like some bizzare metallic mating ritual. A few hardcore motorists had their hazzard lights on as they drove as well. Who knows what that meant. Maybe it meant they wanted their bumpers rubbed, or maybe they wanted to turn but couldn't decide whether to go left or right. We just flashed our high beams and eventually got to the hotel after passing through the security blockade where they look under the car with mirrors on sticks. I guess they were looking for a group of tired Western terrorists looking to blow themselves up, having packed the Tarago with explosives ingeniously concealed underneath, rather than in the large pile of luggage in the back.

It was about 35 degrees and there were lots of chicks with miniskits on milling around. I thought about asking to borrow a mirror on a stick, but thought better of it. The guards on the hotel door poked through our luggage with giant novelty chopsticks looking for more C4 and we were in. Up to the rooms to dump our gear, and into bed for a well-earned sleep. HAH, wrong! It was work time! A chomped down a mini-barrel of Pringles and headed back down to the lobby with my trusty lappy bag to meet my three travelling companions. We were off to the office to check out the call centre. The call centre services the US, so it really only got cranking around 2am.

We arrived at the office and got another frisking. As we entered the lift, I felt my left ball high-five my right ball. They hadn't seen this much action in years.

A couple of hours later, I snapped the lappy shut and we were done. We'd seen the software in action and got the vibe o' the call centre. The call centre guys demonstrated the accents they mimic when calling internationally, then showed us their "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" DVD they were using to perfect Australian accents. We'd nodded respectfully, and I wondered when I'd get my next call from someone sounding like an Asian drag queen. Their accents were actually pretty good. After we'd bidden goodbye to the night shift, the CEO of the company we were visiting clapped his hands together and said "Gentlemen! Who wants a hamgurger!?". Yay, a burger! I'd been awake for 24 hours, 8 of them cramped in a jet drinking VB and eating tiny trays of reheated crap, so I was ready for some real pseudo-food.

We piled back into the Tarago and headed off, straight past a McDonalds. I banished any "WTF?" thoughts, and thought we must be heading somewhere local for a genuine Philipino copy of an American tradition. Ace. To my confusion, we arrived minutes later in some dingy little street full o' neon. Hmm! Maybe hamburgers are outlawed in this country, and we were going for a Black Market Burger. Our host gestured to a dark building and we proceeded inside, where we sat down at a giant rectangular counter inside of which was a seething mass of tight young binkini-clad flesh. Apparently "hamburger" is Philipino CEO code for "bar full of semi-nude teenage girls". Well, if it had to be code for anything, that's probably not a bad choice.

I parked my arse at the bar next to Steve. "Well, this is great" he said. "They're all about the same age as my daughter". I slapped his back in commiseration, my thoughts drifting to my own young family half a world away back in Australia. How would my little girl, Ensign_Bayls be coping without her dad? Would she be sleeping in her little cot, tiny baby-arse pointed upwards in some impossibly uncomfortable sleeping pose, hugging her stuffed doggie? Would her mum be pining without her husband, her soul mate, staring dolefully into the night and clutching a framed wedding photo tightly to her heart, counting the minutes until the conclusion of this business trip would see our union renew... CONNECT FOUR! That's right, a pair of nubile, scantily clad Filipipo teenagers had plonked a Connect Four game on the bar in front of me and were separating the disks into blue and pink. I shot a "WTF?" look at Steve, but he was busy watching a group of six set up a Jenga tower of blocks in front of him. A chubby mamasan plonked some San Miguel Light beers in front of us and waddled away. Light beer has always been sex with a condom to me. Almost like the real thing, but why wouldya!? Regardless, I heartily necked the bottle and it was surprisingly good. With a sly sideways burp into the the hair of the girl caressing Steve's shoulders, it was game on!

Out of practice, I lost the first game. My nubile conquerers squealed with delight and mamasan arrived with two shots of tequila and thrust a piece of paper under my nose. She illuminated it with a little torch and motioned for me to sign it. I scribbled the best forgery of my CEO's signature that I could muster under those conditions, and off she went. Steve was still pulling blocks from his tower but appeared to be having a good time, two bikini-clad vixens sensuously massaging his shoulders now. I looked around. My CEO had a hand on each of two young arses so he was travelling nicely, and the rest of the entourage seemed to be faring pretty well also. Connect Four carried on, and gradually my childhood skillz returned. I worked out that of my two key attention providers, one was an old hand and one was a n00b. The n00b tended to make outrageous bets like "You win, we go naked!" and the old hand would rebuke her, half playfully, half concerned. Inevitably I could beat the n00b, which led to much coaching in some foreign dialect from the gathering crowd of Who Wants to be an Asian Poledancer? Each win brought another beer and some display of nudity and each loss brought Tequila and a receipt. Whatever I was signing was costing 700. 700 what, I had no idea. Presently, Steve's block tower crumbled into a heap and he raised his fist in victory. Whatever his prize was, I didn't see, as a hand cupped my balls and a breathy mouth met my ear. "What hotel you stay?" came the grammatically inept entreaty. I rattled off the name and pondered the testicular conversation that was happening in my pants now.

More of the same was the order of the night, with various salacious offers put on the beer-stained bar, but my resolve held fast. My years of overexposure to the full catalogue of bizzare and inprobable Internet pr0n had rendered me with an immunity to this kind of solicitation. Even when my two protagonists' tongues snaked into each others' open mouths inches from my face, I was busy abstractly wondering about the sheer improbability of a decent future for anyone whose young life had culminated in a career of feigning interest in pervert Western tourists while playing kids' games. My quota of flesh satisfied, I purposely lost the remaining games, my beer-addled brain retaining enough cognisance to assume some concilitory payout these girls would get from mamasan for making me buy them drinks, if not by me r00ting them. At whatever time it was, we pulled stumps. I blocked the last deperate promises of hawt threesomes back to the bowler, and we emerged into the warm night. The bar tab was $1200US. I still didn't know how much 700 was. As we approached the limo/Tarago, our driver stared wide-eyed through his haze of cigarette smoke, struggling to comprehend the fact that we'd emerged sans-girls. "No girls?" he sputtered in disbelief. I nodded somberly, "Afraid not my friend". I heard a grumble of discontent from my pants.

The ride back to the hotel was a subdued affair, partly because we'd been awake for a day and a half, and partly because our universally married entourage was no doubt playing out various foregone mental scenarios involving taut teenage ass. We arrived back to the hotel and hit the bar. After one more San Miguel Light, I was stuffed and stumbled to the elevator. I stepped inside and rode to my floor, leaving a gassy fart as a calling card to the next occupant. In my room I looked at myself in the mirror, dishevelled and messy, my shirt a crumpled canvas painted with the sweet smelling aroma of underage teenage poledancer body lotion. I made a mental note to spare my wife the launder of this article and dispose of it pose haste, preferably by fire. My nerdish insticts flickered, and I firing up the laptop to "check out the forums". I made a quick post and checked IRC. It was typically dead. I made a fake !admin call in #ign to make the admins feel useful and then hit the sack exhausted.

The next day I awoke with a hangover not commensurate with the light beer we'd been quaffing. My mouth felt like someone had poured sand in it and my head hurt like a truck had reversed over it. I sniffed last night's shirt, seeking affirmation that it had all really happened, and then cast it aside heading for the fridge and its precious hair o' the dog. I grabbed the nearest beer and to a throbbing protest from my dehydrated brain, popped the top. It was then that my blurred, bloodshot eyes saw it. San Miguel Light wasn't light beer at all. It was 5%, and "Light on calories!". That explained a lot. How ever many 700's made how ever much was my share of $1200 was probably too much. I suckled the bottle gingerly. As daggers of sunlight pierced my eyeballs through the ineffectual curtains I checked IRC. No response to my !admin call about midget lepers on Vespas infecting server #07. Typical.

I texted Steve. He called and groaned that he was awake so we headed downstairs for the buffet breakfast. The dining area was huge. I got lost twice looking for bacon but managed to find my way back. My guts, blue-balled the night before with promises of a hamburger, were ready with open arms for the mountains of food I shovelled in. By the time we'd finished, the executive team had arrived looking much the worse for wear. With bloodshot eyes and hoarse, gravelly voices, they explained how they'd soldiered on at the hotel bar after we left, and how in the small hours of the morning one of them had missed a room page when two teen hookers had arrived looking to close the deal. Steve and I headed back to the rooms to pack.

My guts had sent a signal to my bowels about the post breakfast buffet payload they could expect soon, and so the order was made to clear the back dock. I sat on the porcelain and did the bidding of my intestines; the result an impressive example of the great aussie grog-bog. Unfortunately as I pulled the lever and bid adieu, it became apparent that something was amiss. The toilet was one of those magical US types that fill with water and then drain away when you flush, except mine apparently only knew act I. It filled and then just sat there. Reckoning it must be a gravity thing, I flushed again, confident that the extra volume of water would convince the incumbent to make good its evacuation. With horror, I saw that no such convenient outcome was imminent, as water crested the lip of the bowl and started cascading onto the floor. Snatching an array of towels and bathrobes, I constructed a hasty system of levees and dykes to contain the surge.

Thankfully the fecal armada I'd birthed in the bowl merely bumped the inside of the seat with the tide instead of breaking free and sailing scross the floor. Still, it wasn't good. A saturated floor populated by a few tiny stray nuggets, and a full bowl looking for all the world like some dire incarnation of an amusement park bumperboat pond, a few underpowered chocolate boats aimlessly drifting and nudging each other on its surface. The bathroom was curiously devoid of a dunnybrush, but I had to find a way to clear this mess before the fleet broke up. I briefly considered thrusting my arm into the e-coli soup, but banished it immediately, looking for some inanimate tool to assist. Nothing came to mind so in MacGuyver-style desperation, I removed a wooden coathanger from the wardrobe and broke it up. The long horizontal pole should do the trick, I reasoned.

I jammed the stick into the bowl, jabbing, poking and twisting, all to no avail. All I was doing was creating undue turbulance on the surface, to which the bronze navy responded by breaking into pieces as it rocked on the choppy tide. A saw a lone peanut break free, a tiny lifeboat seeking freedom from a large tan dreadnaught and several cruiser-sized articles started listing ominously. The fleet was losing structural integrity fast - I knew things were serious. I wasn't going to be able to undo whatever beer-fuelled u-blocker was causing havoc with the meagre tools I had, so I rinsed off my makeshift stick and stashed it with the remainder of its splintered companions on top of the wardrobe amongst some dodgy looking aircon piping. "Noone will ever know" I mused, choking on the fruity aroma eminating from the mire.

Presently checkout time arrived. I towed my baggage to reception, and checked out. As the other guys signed receipts and fell back, I mentioned casually that there was a problem with my shitter. "A problem?" came the inquisitive response. "It's blocked" I explained. I was rewarded with a nod and an understanding "Of course, sir". That was it then, we could escape. But no, we didn't fly out until 8pm that night so we had to leave the bags there, collecting them only after the full extent of my bathroom destroying escapades had become known to whatever crack team of enviro-suited hazmat technicians were brave enough to take on the task of mopping it all up. I suspected that dynamite would have to be used, but then tried not to think about it any more.

The rest of the day was a combination of drinking more full strength beer masquerading as light, and ineffectual brainstorming about what we should do to kill the time. We settled on a massage at a health spa which involved a pre-event communal shower in which I saw enough of my colleages' dicks to last me two lifetimes and culminated in the most painful massage I've ever experienced. As I lay semi-naked on the bed, some tiny lithe girl entered and asked me "you like hard massage?". I said I did. The marathon pobing at my balls the night before had been gentle enough, and this girl looked about 15. I'd had remedial massages before so how bad could it be?

The answer is "bad". When she wasn't sliding up my greased back digging her knees into my overworked kidneys, she was attacking my tortured shoulders with what felt like fists full of blunt screwdrivers. She dug, slapped, probed and punched me into submission, offering the occasional spirited "You IMMUNE to massage!" or "You feel no PAIN!" with what sounded like genuine admiration. I managed a weak "Heh! Yep!" through clenched teeth as tears welled in my eyes. Blinking them back I peered through the semi-darkness at Steve, who was getting his own massage about 4 feet away. His girl was languidly stroking his oiled back with slow tenderness. A little rivulet of dribble snaked from his mouth - was he asleep? Bastard! When it was over I walked gingerly to the shower and stood motionless under the steaming cascade for what seemed like eternity. As I painfully dried myself, Steve and his cawk emerged from his shower stall. I was too paralysed to even shield my eyes.

After that, we had a beer and caught a taxi to the office again. The taxi driver drove us round and round, clearly lost. We called the office and gave him the mobile so a native could give him directions. This had a negligible effect and we still drove around lost, the only saving grace being that the potholed tracks masquerading as roads combined in perfect unison with his shitty all-or-nothing manipulation of the accellerator to jolt my back into some semblence of its former pre-massage mobility. Eventually he dropped us off, about 1km from where we should have been. The taxi cost 200. We finally found the office and got frisked again. We caught the lift to the 14th floor in time to conference-call a guy in Jakarta we needed to get some details from. The hookup was a shocker. I'd seen the spaghetti-like cabling between power poles during our two hour taxi ride to nowhere so I wasn't surprised. Time was up so we left for the airport.

Here, I got my final two ball-attentive friskings and then we were on the plane. Our gay hostie remembered us and beamed with pride when I recited the safety demo back to him flawlessly. He then berated the pair behind us who couldn't understand because they were from some non-English speaking background. He threatened to move them if they didn't take it seriously and I looked at their seats and their generous allocation of legroom with envious eyes. Unfortunately they worked out how to check for fire and throw a door so they got the seats - I got a beer. The trip back was like the trip over except in reverse. It's all really the same when you're confined to a little metal cylnder hurtling along at 900km/h 10km up. As usual I ran through the mental catalogue of "Aircrash Investigations" episodes I'd seen and mused about which one a crash right now would be like, how long it would take me to fall to earth and what kind of actor they'd get to play me. Probably Richard Burton if he was still alive.

After eight hours we were in Sydney. Three pointless hours later we were ferried in the pissing rain to our domestic flight and back to Adelaide where we arrived at 11am. I'd been awake since 7am the day before, and I chuckled wryly about my joust with the foreign toilet safe in the knowledge that Interpol probably now couldn't track me down for crimes against humanity. I checked that the Adelaide boys hadn't blown anything up in the office and headed home to see my girls. They weren't home, so I ventured outside and dragged out the brazier. Cracking a beer, I ignited my kerosine-drenched shirt and reflected on the past two days before the retard dog over the back fence detected that someone was enjoying the peace and started yapping. I then dumped in a real toilet - it was good to be back!

Build Queue 100% + 365

Well, the Ensign turns 1 year old today. Seems like only yesterday she emerged from the She_Admiral's innards in a torrent of viscous womb-juice.

How time flies!

MR Z

I was driving home tonight, piloting my ebony steed with casual aplomb down Fullarton Road when I saw something ridiculous looming behind me. It was a black 4WD which caught my attention because as it approached, it was ziggin' and zaggin' through the sparse traffic obviously on some kind of time-critical mission. Each lane change was celebrated with a single crisp flash of the indicatior after 90% of the lane change had been completed. Impressive.

Anyway, as it pulled up behind me, I could see it was an Audi 4WD. I didn't even know Audi made them. And it was immaculate black, like someone polished it with a freshly slaughtered baby bunny every day. The jet black wanker-plates announced that the driver was a "MR Z".

So far so good, except Mr Z was the spitting image of Rader O'Reilly from M*A*S*H, except perhaps shorter. I only caught a quick glimpse as I was at a red light and he manouvered his black ego chariot to within 5mm of my towbar, obviously comforted to be 100mm closer to his eventual destination than would have been the case had be pulled up normally.

Anyway, the light went green and I blasted off the line, my parched power steering reservoir causing the belts to add a satisfying whine to the engine's usual masculine roar. Seconds later, MR Z streaked past, speeding to the next set of lights, to repeat the effort of attepting to fellate the exhaust pipe of the car in front with his prefectly chromed boutique front bumper.

Bye MR Z, bye!

My Stupid Watch (Band)

My watch is great. It's a SEIKO Chronograph, which translates to "watch". It's got a stopwatch with a cool red sweeping second hand, and a "tachymeter". Tachymeter translates to "numbers around the diameter of the face". You can use the second hand and the markings to see how long it takes you you travel 1000m and then you can calculate your speed. I guess the guys at SEIKO thought that there's a lot of people owning cars with odometers but no spedometers or something. If I ever have a 400km/h car and need to go 1km to Hungry Jacks, I'll know to allow 9 seconds. Anyway, the watch.. nay, chronograph itself is great.

The band however, sucks! It's one of those metal ones that has a couple of curved plates that fold together under your wrist when it's closed and open on a hinge when you flick it open. So far so good. Except the thing FLIES open any time you attempt to do anything with the limb it's on. Like open a door, or close a door, or pick something up or turn your wrist to see the time, or think about turning your wrist to check the time. Maybe it's got metal fatigue. I certainly have useless watch band fatigue.

I took it to a watchmaker at Marion. "Check this out. Canya fix it?". I figured that the guy must have seen this kind of thing 1000 times. He had all sorts of tools laying around. "Jeeeez!" he said, scratching his head, "I dunno". My mental "WTF do you mean?" was interrupted by him saying "I could sell you a new one".

"Yah, thanks. Don't need a new one. Just need this one to stay closed. Can't you bend it back to how it was?"
"Oooh, jeeez. I dunno".
"Wouldn't one of those tools do it? What about that little hammer or those pliers?"
"The thing is, I dunno how long it would last"
"Let's find out. What about that round thing with the thread. Would that do it?"
"Maybe you could get a rubber one instead"
"I like this one though."
"Yeh, you're better off getting a new one"

Seriously, how hard could it be? I ended up telling him not to worry about it because the fruity smell of fresh baby-shit was wafting up from the Ensign, who's obviously been watching the exhange with the same bemused disgust as myself. Lacking the linguistic skills to express her displeasure at the ineptitude on display, she'd clearly made a frank statement the only way she knew how. I lingered just enough for the alleged watchmaker to sniff the acrid air, and then headed for the baby-change room. At least they have Hi-Five on the TV.

As I scraped babyshit off my daughter clammy date, feeling the unnerving warmth through the wiper, I pondered three things.

- How carrot rice and corn all seems to get the "Yep, straight through mate" call by the intestinal door bitch, arriving at the bowels unscathed like some fecal VIP.
- How the chicks on Hi-Five are tubbing out.
- And how customer service by watchmakers has gone the way of the Dodo.

At length, I emerged from the humid, fetid labyrinth of the change facility and re-entered the mall proper. With the third revelation fresh in my mind, I set a vector for the nearest carpark exit, shooting a middle finger salute to the watchmaker as I passed. My watch band shot open and dropped my watch to my elbow as usual.

My Ebony Powerhouse

A few people are curious about my vehicular tastes, so behold!

First, my daily driver: 1994 Holden Apollo sedan.


And my project car: 1994 Holden Apollo sedan.


I like to keep things low key, so while she looks like a sleeper, she does numbers.

First, the donk.

It's a 3.0lt featherweight block, stroked out to 3.0lt, delivering 1200 kilojoules of power at 1000RPM. I use a mixture of Black and Gold oil and Dr Pepper, which lowers the viscosity and adds taste, so she drives like a 3.01lt. As you can see, I have removed the cover from the -ve battery terminal which cuts 10g off the kerb weight. I also installed a streamlined windscreen washer reservoir which balances out the front end.

3 blue cat6 LAN cables have been patched in to the silver thing in the middle, to maximise high-end bandwidth to the firewall.

The windsceen wipers have been extended 3mm-5mm and a blue blade has been used. The light blue is designed to reflect errant photons rather than absorbing them like a stock black wiper blade, meaning less photoelectric resistance on the windscreen and allowing an additional 0.02nm of torque. The wiper motor has been tricked out to 30watts, including the installation of an aftermarket wiper dwell relay which times wiper oscillations with gearchanges to minimise wind resistance and glue the front feet to the tarmac.

I've also includes some generic yellow campground permit stickers. As I usually drive this baby hard, the weight of the stickers counters the torque of hard acceleration, and counterbalances sustained driving with the tacho needle weighing down the right hand side of the car when it points right.



The shoes are Intensa 205 R15s with a Addigitasse crosshatch tread pattern. I keep them permanently bald to counter railing and decrease diameter. This baby corners like the Mad Mouse in steroids. I've installed some brake dust to the rims to deaden the inherent sheen and counter high speed bump steer. All front end bushes have been fully waxed with Nolathane Automotive Nair for improved handling and wear.



You can see here the TH400 drink holder with 2800 Stall and Stage 2 Shift Kit attached to yella terra street terra roller vent covers with crow 496 lift ducts. This delivers chilled air to any installed cans. Out of frame is the digital clock, set 180 seconds slow, and allowing me to get there before most ricers have even changed the batteries in their LED exhaust tips.



The iCOM UHF CB sets off the interior really well, and compliments the stock Holden/Toyota/Whatever shifter. The gear indicator light has been re-engineered to phase shift the stock green light with a 70 lux 400 blue light at 500 kelvin. The colour temp compliments the guage illumination kit pumping out 280 luminaires at 0.038nm reducing intra-occular rod and cone stimulii and preserving night vision.




Protecting the investment is the smashed door locked filled with superglue installed by a retarded wanker using a tyre iron and a paving brick while Tossed and I played Cossacks on the LAN at work.



Dual rear antennas provide a striking contrast to the clean lines of the vehicle, and turbo-like whistling noise at high speeds.