We're skidding around corners a lot.
And we nearly ran over that drunken bum on the sidewalk. (No, it was NOT me ...)
So what's been the rumpus?
I got past my 53rd birthday in February via some semi-belated, alcohol-fuelled fun with mates here in Wellington. Wasn't a barn-burner, but it was a good time.
During that fun night, there was brief interlude checking out a new "shooters only" place, The Shack on Manners St. – a hole in the wall where you just stand and pound shooters. There are no chairs. Three bartenders just handing over shooters to eager funsters, who (like us) were just too impatient to walk another half a block to an ACTUAL bar. An odd little concept. But fun.
Also, The Shack had three enormous bouncers outside – all dressed alike, in head-to-toe black (of course) and with some sort of puffy vests on, making them look like paramilitary SEAL guys. Just how rough did this tiny phonebooth of a bar get later on? Any more than 8 people in it, and you couldn't pull back your arm to hit anyone.
I'll likely never know. This was a one-off "Let's go see!" at the behest of Tina, who was already pretty full of vodka at that point.
Fun new concept I invented: Or at least thought about for a second, and didn't check to see if anyone else has thought of this ...
Over the Xmas holidays I encountered this a fair bit. When being subjected to someone drunkenly blathering on about nothing, I suddenly thought it was just like a jazz concert emanating from the general vicinity of their face.
There are noises coming out, and occasionally a noise you recognise slips by. But generally, it's a stream of stuff that is best listened to as background noise. There is no understanding it completely, if you're not a jazz musician (or really drunk). Don't get me wrong, I like jazz. But when emanating from someone's face when you expect straightforward rock ... it can get old, fast.
Is there a special school for Landlords, where they learn to be lazy, cheap bastards? – I generally like my current Landlord, except ... he has begun to exhibit the tell-tale traits of every other rat-bastard swine Landlord I've ever had ... aka, someone who maybe should have thought more carefully when the idea of becoming a Landlord struck him as wise, prudent, moneymaking scheme, requiring little or no effort on his part.
You have to spend SOME money on the place when shit breaks. Applying sticks and mud from the yard to busted-ass stuff is not the way to go.
To clarify ... the place I rent now is fantastic – for me. JUST me. It was billed as a 2-bedroom, but in fact it's a one bedroom with a den (or a play room for the cats). There is no closet in said second bedroom. And, the big bay window overlooking the green valley below has a propensity for falling out into said valley, because it is as old as the house, and is held in by a couple of .99 cent hinges, centrifugal force contingent on gravity, and apparently, the crossed fingers of The Landlord.
The Landlord expressed surprise no one was biting to rent the place when I rocked up and decided to take it last year ... a good 6 months since he had the place listed for rent. And the reason is, it's not a 2 bedroom. Simple as that. And it needs just a BIT of work here and there ...
Also it's an old place, turn of the century (two centuries ago), and a fair bit of the wood hasn't aged well, and isn't prone to accepting and keeping screws in place.
Like where window hinges go.
A smaller front window (outside my bedroom) fell out and broke, on the patio next to us, the day Brandon drove me home from yet another hospital stay. We were sitting there on the deck, enjoying a beer (because what better thing to immediately consume upon arriving home from a hospital stay could there be?) and the bedroom window just tottered out of the frame like an old man losing his grip on his walker ... and smashed. That really harshed our buzz.
Which made me see a truth: a blind baby could break into this place with a butter knife. Or maybe just patience ... stand there on the patio for a while, and wait for a window to fall out.
But I didn't care all that much. I live at the end of a dead-end road, that's narrow and difficult to navigate at the best of times. Add night, rain, fog, and a general feeling of "Jesus, they're going to kill me!" to the mood of a fleeing B&E guy, and it's downright perilous.
Plus I'm down a set of precarious, pre-Columbian steps. The escape routes for would-be B&E people who might be casing the joint aren't many, and WOULD in fact lead to being easily caught if anyone was at home, or was coming home right behind them – (1) Back the way you came, up the precarious steps and down the really narrow and steep road, and; (2) Over the railing down the steep, deadly drop into the valley. (Option #2 is also Option #1 for what I would consider helping a B&E person with, if I caught them in the act).
So I reckoned it was considerably safer than a place in a busy 'hood on the flatlands of Wellington.
It's especially nice for the cats (it's a feline Disneyland around here) ... as it's mostly jungle, and the dead-end street means no traffic. And as it's mostly nice jungle full of cool birds (like the native Kaka and heaps of others), I love it too.
The landlord has materialised a couple of times to do promised yard work (such that my "yard" is) with the cutting of foliage via a big, loud, manly gas-powered weed whacker. I even sat outside one of those times, to drink beer in the sun on the patio, and watch him slave away. It's apparently hard, sweaty work trying to balance on a steep incline to whack weeds with a big, heavy, gas-smoke-spewing weed whacker too. Heh.
Then just after the new year, another shining example of Landlord Swinishness emerged.
I'm on the top floor of this house; there is one other apartment under me. A lovely couple from Manchester (Andy & Sarah) moved in shortly after I did last year. They explained to the landlord that they'd be wanting it until the end of February, as that's when they planned on continuing their extended work/holiday tour of New Zealand, and points beyond. This was agreed on by all parties.
Over the past year, I got to know Andy & Sarah. Really nice folks.
For reasons I will never understand, the landlord fronted up to them in January, and essentially told them they were out at the end of January – a month early. I suspect perhaps he did this as he didn't want to go through another 'dry' period of this one-bedroom pad going unrented for even a day. (A BIG clue that he, like every other Landlord I've encountered, is a cheap chiseling weasel of a bastard-coated bastard, and has no business being a Landlord).
Needless to say, my friends were in a bit of a quandary. I found out about it when talking with them shortly after this happened, and immediately offered up my second "almost" bedroom for them for the month of Feb. I had the bare-bones of a guest room already (a bed in there), and they had all the stuff to make it comfy.
They were happy to grab it up, and I was happy to have them. It was fun, and an interesting experiment to see how well this place would handle visitors for an extended period.
I learned that: (a) Landlords are, to a man (or woman) swine ... no matter how nice they seem at first, and; (b) This place definitely isn't an actual 2 bedroom, where two people could live comfortably on a permanent basis.
It's a bit tight for space, but in the case of visitors/travelers, I didn't mind having to shuffle stuff around a bit to make it work for the three of us for a month. So for guests, it's great.
And on the plus side, for my help, I have inherited enough additional "apartment stuff" (that I'd been meaning to buy but just hadn't yet) to make the place completely ready for any future visitors to Welly.
So – come on down you slack Canadian bastards ... if you (and your liver) dare ... heheheh. You cannot get a better deal for holiday fun. Come to a nice place you've never visited, free accommodation, constant alcohol abuse, an alcoholically abusive tour guide, and needless to say, fun. With alcohol.
Besides, it's the only place in the world where we speako da lingo of your average Canook. There is no armed insurrection, it's really REALLY nice, and your Canook Buck (Loonie!) goes further even than in Canookistan.
Let's see, what else has rolled on since the turning of the (screw) new year ...
I was back in hospital a couple of times, but this is getting old (to write AND read about). So no more hospital reports on this blog, unless I have to go in and have my head amputated. Then that'll really be the last one.
Dex the Wonder Cat went on walkabout for 4 days, throwing The Fear into me ... then he trotted back in, none the worse for wear, and only marginally apologetic. So all ended well there. Squeak the Other Wonder Cat did not disappear, but did seem to wonder where Dex went. In between meals, of course.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have proven me correct yet again (and in other news: sky blue, water wet) ... These perennial, perpetual stumble-bums somehow started out the season with all guns blazing, and for a brief shining moment, were at #1 in the entire LEAGUE. I was ready to open my parka and hot chocolate concession in hell!
I knew though, it would not last ... and predicted then that they'd fail to make the playoffs. And they are well on their way to doing (or not doing, actually) just that. They are currently in 25th place, in a 30-team League. From whence they were once #1.
Time is running out. The Fail is STRONG in this team. They will be golfing soon.
A familiar site, 45 years in a row now ...
Failure, it seems, is their ONLY option. It's now 45 years and counting since they won a Cup ... and this year I've even managed to make some money off a couple of fans who agreed to bet on them!
So it's been a good year for laughs AND extra cash. Hey, let's have a BIG party when they fail the 50th time in a row! It's only 5 years away. There might even be a couple of guys from the '67 team that won the last cup who are still alive!
Occupy THIS – While it seemed a good idea on paper ... the Occupy Wall Street movement rapidly degenerated into a massive cluster-fuck of people living in tents in parks (not exactly roughing it there, dudes!) having NO idea what it was all about – if the 'organisers' interviewed on TV news were any indication.
When it was all done and dusted, it seemed it WAS a good way for unemployed people in each participating city to go meet others of their own kind, and trade useful information – like where the best drug dealer was in the 'tent city', and where the hot hippy-chick tents were.
Hey, no problem with that as a fundamental ... as with any "big idea', it's best to start with baby steps ... always begin your cause with a good buzz, and some slammin' sex.
THEN maybe the banks and big businesses will ... what was it again? Open their doors and money vaults, and welcome you all in for as much as you could carry? Sure, yeah, that was it.
The pre-game show for the Mayan 2012 Meltdown – The past year or so featured nature showing humanity that it's not always what it usually can be in places. It snowed in Wellington, NZ, late last year ... volcanoes misbehaved in a few places around the world ... it shook and flooded like a mo-fo in Japan (tsunami following big-ass quakes), and the flooding due to torrential rains deluged some parts of Aussie ... while other areas were constantly on fire. Some sharks also happily ate anyone trying to get away from the flooding and fire by jumping in the ocean to escape.
Canada didn't get a winter, but Europe and the UK sure did. Ceaseless big earthquakes bitch-slapped Christchurch, NZ, where there weren't even fault lines before ... and just recently, massive tornadoes mulched and spun a large portion of the south-eastern USA.
So what does that leave for the grande finale when things are supposed to REALLY turn to shit this year? I can only imagine ... the internet will go down! Noooooooooooo!
Anonymously making their point – I absolutely loved the response "Anonymous" (those wacky web ninjas!) deployed after US Government fuckwits decided to knee-jerk with absolutely NO knowledge or wisdom about how the net works, to try and enact some laws to allow them to fine and penalise and arrest and beat and waterboard anyone having ANYTHING do to with downloading stuff ...
... and on that day they voted, Anonymous took down SEVERAL key US websites, including Justice, the FBI and the CIA. (Please feel secure ... um ... hang on ... we're supposed to be in charge of securing the USA and the world from terrorists, and yet, we can't even get on our Facebook page ... )
Stick to what you know, you government jackwagons. You come out into the world to screw with stuff people like to use (and that you know nothing about), and you will pay the price. Kind of like when SEAL teams go and have conversations with ACTUAL terrorists.
So to finish this long, rambling mess of a catchup blog ... it's really quiet here on a Sunday. It's the day after Andy & Sarah left for two weeks of the sight-seeing the rest of NZ, before they head to Southeast Asia for a while. It was a blast having them here, but now the house seems a bit empty. And quiet.
Which makes me keen to host anyone I know as a traveling guest, as mentioned before!
(Even the two Wonder Cats are prowling around wondering where everyone went!)
Until next time ...
Yours in absurdity, Steve
