Thermodynamics

The heat is on.

Or rather, in ... in me, to be specific.

In a risky move to fly in the face of an earlier Blog claim where I said I

Billy Crystal played "Miracle Max"to perfection.
No clue as to whether he too was as
hot as me, under all that latex.

wouldn't blather on about medical issues after covering them almost to death ("He's only MOSTLY dead!",  to quote Billy Crystal as Miracle Max from The Princess Bride), I'm going to mention an odd tangent / side effect from
the BKAs I underwent (Below Knee Amputations) a few years ago.

I seem to be ... hotter now.

Sadly, that doesn't mean I'm more appealing to the ladies. No, I mean ... I'm hotter. As in, a big steamy sweaty pile of superheating molecules. Yeah, I know ... here I go again, bringing the sexy!

They told me this might happen ...

"They" being the nurses and physios who blitzed me with advice and ideas and grandiose plans for me doing exercises while I was still a drug-addled, befuddled mess in the hospital ward bed.

Among all the things they said (and I immediately forgot), I somehow remembered them telling me (following my 2nd leg being removed): "You will now be burning as much as 400% more energy when you do simple things like standing and walking around."

My first thought was: "Cool! Now I can get the same effects and benefits of running a 10 K just by wobbling around the kitchen getting a beer from the fridge!"

Sadly I was to learn that was not QUITE the case. What it really meant was, my energy would drain heaps faster while trying to do basic things ... like wobbling to the fridge on a beer quest.

Then I noticed, in my amusing and ungainly attempts at moving from point A to Fridge and back, how much warmer I got while engaged in doing this. Then I noticed I was warmer all the time, even just sitting still.

The Human Torch could
ignite himself at will, shoot flames
at villains, and even fly.
So far the best I can manage
is soaking a t-shirt down
like I've been standing in
the rain, with malaria,
in just under 10 seconds.

Being a superhero / comic book fan, I of course immediately thought I might be developing a super power, maybe like Johnny Storm – aka The Human Torch of Fantastic Four fame.

Wrong again ... unless you call sweating like a feverish hog on acid in a sauna a "super power",  this was not to be. About the only plus factors to being ceaselessly warm (even warmer than I usually was before all this medical mayhem ensued) are: (1) I only had the heat on in the house once this past "winter"; (2) I wear shorts exclusively now, inside and out; (3) I never wore a jacket once all "winter".

On the down side, I'm uncomfortably warm at what passes for room temperature here in Wellington. And surprisingly, I'm usually in some sort of room – or taxi cab, or city bus. But more on that in a moment.

I bought a digital thermometer for my desk at work some time back, with the intention of measuring the temperature in the room to compare to a thermometer reading of MY temperature ... back in the days when a hike in my body temp usually meant I was succumbing to infection yet again. So I needed to know: was it me, or the lizard-people fucking around with the thermostat again?

I still use the thermometer on my desk ... only now it just demonstrates that 22º C (72º F) – which is

That would be me there, in a typical day at the office.
Someone has the thermostat set for "desert effect". Either
we're growing cacti, or raising iguanas.

pretty much universally agreed as a comfortable room temperature for most humans – feels to me like a session in a supernova sauna down in Dante's Inferno. The wonky rat-bastard and badly designed air-con at work usually sees the temp hitting 24º by 11 am most days ... so the effect that has on me? Well, it usually feels like I'm in Tahiti, wearing a parka (zipped up, hood on), and eating my dad's famous Nine Alarm 'Habanero Hoedown' Facemelting Chili.

With no beer to wash it down with. Which is INHUMAN. At the very least they could let me rig up a draft tap on my desk. Next to the fan.

So yes – the other item I have on my desk, next to the digital thermometer, is an electric fan. This fan runs all day, aimed right at me, blowing the stuffy hot dusty office atrocity they consider "air" around me. This at least makes it somewhat tolerably comfortable, providing I don't move much, or drink too many cups of hot coffee. Or think warm thoughts. Or stare too long at that one girl down the hall there ...

What makes it even more absurd (and finally, here's the rumpus): many people in my office are sitting around, directly under heat vents, with multiple layers on, wearing outside jackets, touques (beanies) and gloves.

Seriously.

Yissss, my precious younglings. Go
forth into the world, and always
sit under heat lamps when you can!

How frickin' hot does it have to BE, people? Were you raised by lizards?!

Like any psuedo-superhero, I seem to come by a higher metabolic / thermodynamic "resting" setting genetically. My dad is always warm, too. Not quite to my newfound resting level of Vesuvius On A Bad Day. But he's warmer than most.

This is not traditional ice fishing garb. But you know, any
excuse for offering a photo of bikini-clad babes for my
friends to ogle while they pretend to read my Blog.

We used to go ice fishing when I was a kid. I'd have a layer less on than most kids my age. But my dad was a remarkable vision of superhuman abilities, in just one thin layer of long-johns, and a skidoo suit – but that suit would be half-unzipped and not really containing any body heat.

He wouldn't be wearing a touque. He'd fish bare-handed, too (no mitts) ... and often he'd scoop the newly-forming ice out of the augered hole (so the hole wouldn't freeze over and cut the line) with his bare hands.



I feel like I could do that now with just a light spring jacket on.

My dad also used to joke that he was so warm all the time, he'd sweat while he was swimming. I get that now. Not a joke. It's REAL, people!

This is more like what most people would wear while
ice fishing – maximum warmth for the minimal movement
involved with the game of ice fishing. Also, you would
NOT be surrounded by babes – even warmly-dressed babes.
Because as we dudes know, women find any weather that's
below 25º C,  cloudy, or even a bit breezy"freezing".
No matter what they're wearing.
So no. No babes for you, ice-fisher-boy.
The best you can hope for is MAYBE one other pal
willing to go out there on the ice and drink with you
while you attempt to catch fish on a frozen lake.

Lately too I've noticed with some bemusement that folks in Wellington view me as some odd absurdity, as I mosey around in short sleeved shirts on "winter" days here.

While it may be true that if I stood around outside all day in just a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, I would eventually maybe feel just a wee bit uncomfortably cold – but, it occurred to me at some point last year, after leg #2 went the way of the Dodo, that I'm never outside for much longer than 5 minutes during a normal weekly work day, during "winter".

I go outside my house in the morning and catch a taxi down to the closest bus stop (superhuman powers of sweat notwithstanding, I'm not quite up to walking such distances – yet). Total time being out in the elements: 1-2 minutes waiting for the cab. Then I'm inside said cab, where most drivers have the heat set at Let's celebrate my equatorial homeland! levels, AND are wearing a winter-type jacket, gloves, and beanie. So for that short (yet hot and sweaty) cab ride, I roll my window halfway down.

The standard attire for bus drivers in Wellington. This
is accompanied by a baseline heat setting of somewhere
between "steam bath" and "rim of a jungle volcano".

Then it's maybe a 5 minute (max) wait at the bus stop. This allows me to cool down a bit from the steam-room-like taxi ride ... but then of course it's on to the bus. Where most drivers are either Pacific Islanders, or women, or both. This means (1) the heat is cranked to walking-on-hot-coals-barefoot degrees, and, (2) said driver is also clad in what appears to be an furry astronaut suit for warmth.

While most bus rides in a 'normal' seat are a sticky, lurid, humid affair, I've learned NOT to sit on the seats that have the heaters directly under them. It's hot enough in a regular bus seat ... but if I sit on one of those with a heater under it, my jimmies are well roasted by the time I get to work.

Upon de-bussing, I'm only outside for another 15 to 20 seconds max, as I beeline for the coffee shop ... and then once suitably laden with warm caffeine and a muffin, I'm up the (hot) elevator enroute to my Sahara-like terrarium of an office.

So that's a winter's day for me – no need of any extra jacket or sweater for any time I'm outdoors ...  I occasionally even venture out for short strolls (15 minutes round trip) at lunch to "kill something and eat it" (well, OK, buy something pre-made and eat it).

On summer days, I do spend more time outside during the week. Mostly it's during longer breaks at lunch

A few of my workmates taking lunch in a dank, dark and dingy
office corner – the sort that don't go outside at lunch. You can
also see where Peter Jackson got the idea for some of his LOTR 'extras'.

and at coffee breaks ("morning and afternoon tea", as it's called here). I do this for two reasons: (1) It's really nice out, and if I'm in the shade, fresh air really rocks the casbah, compared to the recycled, stale, dusty, inert gas being passed off as air in the office, and (2) women of an eye-pleasing nature are outside strolling around. This is a much-preferred visual vista, when compared to the alternative – the sullen slouches, lumpy layabouts and traumatic trolls in my office. (OK, there are some nice, and nice looking, people in my office ... but when it's warm and sunny out, these attractive and nice people go outside at lunch, too. That leaves just the fugly and sullen types taking their sustenance inside. There must be something about daylight and fresh air on troll skin that isn't good for them).

So to wrap this up ... yes, much of my existence now is spent in quest of a cool place with fresh air and pleasing views to cast my gaze upon. (Which narrows it down to ... pub patios, with an umbrella to block the sun. And brisk table service).

No super powers seem forthcoming, sadly ...

... unless I can somehow figure out a way to extend my inherent thermodynamic powers to cooking things just by holding on to them ... or by making coffee by staring at the kettle from across the room ... or maybe something to do with ... drinking?

Oh hey, what do you know!!

This is even a Canadian concept!
Right up my alley!

And, of course, I'm still

Oh and if / when you tear your eyes away from the snowy bikini babes up there, be sure to have a gander at my pal Don's latest adventures over at Brew-ha-ha.

Seems he's been out gambling, to augment his drinking fun! Or is it the other way around ...

... and down the road at 'Shwa Stories, my other scribbling pal Glenn is eyeing up some cinematic shenanigans in Oshawa.

Until next time, if I can manage to stop sweating like a typhoid victim working on a forge in the jungles of Argentina at noon, I'm forever on the lookout for all things absurd.

Excuses

We all deploy them.

Excuses, or their 'slightly weaker cousin in a cheaper suit' – rationalisations.

They come in handy when we fuck up. Or forget. Or fail to achieve things that seem like "gimmes" or expected results.

I'll start with one right off the bat! It's been a few weeks since my last blog, because ... well, I've had shit to do ... I've been really busy at my real job. There was this deadline, see.

And it was raining. A lot.

There was a plague ... locusts! A flood! Then ... a fire!

The sun was in my eyes!

It wasn't my fault!

Two weeks ago, there was a boatload of Kiwis down in San Francisco harbour looking hard for some sort of excuse like one of those. Maybe even more than one.

There was this incredibly expensive, rich-guy's hobby-horse thing, see ... a little thing called The America's Cup. And the Kiwis lost. Bigtime. In the grandest fashion imaginable.

In perhaps the greatest choke of all time, in any sort of sport or self-inflicted bit of public humiliation, this boat load of 'expert' sailors went up 8-1 in a race where the winner was the first boat load of guys to win 9.

So, doing the quick math ... all they had to do was win ONE MORE. You know, like those eight OTHER times.

There was only one other boat involved. That would be the one losing, 8-1.

Then the wheels fell off the wagon (or the spinnakers fell off the mega-yacht's mast, as it were ...) and not only did the Kiwis of Team New Zealand blow 8 straight races to LOSE 9-8 ...

... the other boat-load of mostly-Kiwis (under the guise of being "Team America") had to come back from minus-2 at the start of the whole sordid affair, because they got caught cheating and were assigned two penalty points. (Cheating? Were they using a motor? Warp engines?)

So, in fact, Team New Zealand lost 11-8. After being up 8-1. There were two extra, added "IN YOUR FACE!" points in the tally.

Stand back – there is a big choking hazard here.

Can you say: all aboard the FAIL BOAT?! Hey, CHOKE MUCH?

There have been many teams and/or athletes who've choked on the verge of victory ... who have blown goats, sucked canal water, or just totally lost the plot, and choked SO hard, so as to lose what appeared to be a "gimme" of a winning series. But these guys ... hell, they lost so abjectly and stupendously bad, they temporarily made Toronto Maple Leafs fans forget about their 47+ years of absolute, consistent failure.

(It's never too early to put the boots in on Leafs fans!)

It seems there were NO excuses forthcoming from the big-money-boys who funded this expensive debacle ... nor from the skipper, or the sad-sack lot of meatbags on the boat posing as world-beating sailors.

And really, how could there be? It was broadcast daily in High Definition on TV for all to see. They just blew it. They folded up like a cheap lawn chair in the wind.

They were this close >|< to the finish line, and couldn't step over it.

It's a good thing the media-saturated public forgets about these things fast, and easily ... here in New Zealand, it's been two weeks since this outlandish whack of self-inflicted humiliation, and we're already off riding the high tide of an unbeaten All Blacks side as they approach one final game in the series to determine who wins a best-of tilt between NZ, Aussie, South Africa and Argentina.

Who cares about a bunch of rich losers in a boat anyway? It's the proven All Blacks, all the way now! They hardly ever lose ... mostly ...

Providing they beat South Africa tomorrow ... it'll all be in the bag.

But back to this yachting nonsense for a second.

There is one other particularly annoying thing about this whole America's Cup fiasco of a ... hobby? Yes, I'll borrow Neil Miller's wisdom and call it what it is. It's a hobby. It's not a sport. It's not even a game. It's a upper-class, rich-bastards time-waster of a hobby. It's a jaunty bit of "Look what we can spend our money on!"

Actually there are THREE things that are also annoying about all this. (Hey, I just woke up ... that's my story, and I'm sticking with it!)

(1) It's a thing that precious few people in the world can relate to, first-hand – because not many people can afford a massive, expensive thing like a yacht. Not many of us can even afford to buy a ticket to go for a ride on one.

So it's nothing like an actual sport like rugby, or hockey, or baseball, or soccer, where anyone can find a ball and an empty field (or a puck, a stick and a rink) and go out with their pals and have a go ... even as kids.

Kids in the poorest countries in the world will find a way to play a game of soccer. Some of those kids can (and do) grow up to be pro soccer players. But for lots of them, they start out playing with an old, hole-ridden, deflated ball, and no shoes.

To be a kid capable of going out to race a big expensive yacht ... well, being born into privilege in a first-world country is only part of it. You have to be that, plus, you need to live in a city near an ocean. Plus your parents have to be willing to fork out a bunch of dough for said yacht ... and, those parents also need to be willing to let you and your layabout, punkass friends to go out on said yacht, because chances are high you'd run the thing into something and sink it.

There's no way in hell most people in the world would have a chance to ... or even consider ... waking up on a Saturday morning to amass their pals for a bit of a jaunt on the high seas, speeding around in a hugely expensive racing yacht – against a bunch of OTHER rich kids with the same sort of yacht at their disposal.

This is a thing that – if you do indulge – that demonstrates you are clearly one of the top-echelon 1% rich-twit bastards of the world.

(2) The nerve of some marketing maven by calling this Team New Zealand boat "The

Good on you, marketing mavens. The "people"
actually bought into this travesty!

People's Boat"?! What "people" would this be? The middle-class working joes of New Zealand? The people on welfare? Even those of us with decent enough jobs to buy good craft beer?

How about ... NO!?

Man, kudos to that bit of marketing genius ... because many "people" here even bought into it!

Oh, the third reason?

(3) If we need any other proof that this is the lamest sort of hobby/event that tries way too hard to be taken seriously – there are the many and varied excuses wherein a race cannot go forward ... the things that can cause this 'hobby' to be delayed/cancelled make golf look like a hard-core, blood-spattered game with top athletes having at it, tooth, fang and nail.

This particular event in San Francisco got called off for things like "There's too much wind"; "There isn't enough wind"; and "Someone thought they saw a whale swimming around".

Seriously? Too much wind to race a boat that is propelled by ... wind? And ... A whale? They live in the sea, and that's mostly what they do?

A whale of an excuse ... not!

Those sentient sea creatures who are really good at avoiding being bumped into by a bunch of clowns in a sailboat.

That's the rumpus, right there. That ... is one of the lamest excuses yet.

Why not just tell it like it is ... clearly when that "Hey, I think I saw a whale in the harbour!" call went out, it was because some (or all) of the guys were too hung-over to be out racing on the water, because they were in Team New Zealand's boat, in the process of being soundly beaten, like rented mules ... caned like red-headed step-children, that you keep in the attic, because they owe you money.

And they were all pouty about it. And so they got drunk the night before. And now they're too sick and pouty and mopey to go out again today, and have their asses handed to them ... again. So ... yeah. A whale. Sure, that could happen. Let's call off this race, OK? Can't be going out there and maybe hurting a whale.

But on to more important things. Let's go All Blacks!

And as I'm publishing this blog the day before the All Blacks play the Boks ... I hope my next Blog isn't all about a bunch of lame excuses as to why the All Blacks lost.

This just in, you twerking
twerp. This is NOT sexy.
You look brain-damaged.
And infectious.

Oh one other thing that just crossed my newly-coffee-infused brain ... what is the excuse for this creature called Miley Cyrus all over the TV and the net? What appears to be a teenager who just grew breasts, and who is now hell-bent on showing them to us (not to mention her skinny ass, and, her biological-meltdown-cesspool of a tongue) is now news-worthy.

There seems to be NO excuse.

We need to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

And hey! Don't forget to tune in to all things beery and fun over at Brew-Ha-Ha, where Don is always ready to serve up some suds-fuelled hilarity! And over at Shwa Stories, my mate Glenn has his finger on the pulse of all things Oshawa-ish! (Say that 5 times, fast!)



Until the next (ideally excuse-free) blog, I'm always, absurdly,