Randomly unexpected - that's so 'gay'!

OK "Take 2" on this post.

I started this in hospital (again) on my iPad with "Blogger+", an iTunes Store application meant to make it easy to post up on Blogs.

It was easy all right. Right up to the point where I spastically wobbled around in my hospital bed and erased the entire post ... and a half hour of searching the thing turned up bupkiss. Nada. Zilch.

So I'm home and back on the big iMac. I'll now see if I can recall whatever the hell it was I was rambling on about ...

I recall starting out by saying it was going to be a collection of various observations of late – and although I was in hospital, I didn't want to make it another whinging hospital thread ... although there were a few things in hospital that amused me to the point where I will list them.

But first ...

The hip and trendy new terms all the kids have been using, and using incorrectly.

Random – This became about as ubiquitous as "gay" as a knee-jerk thing to say about something (not meaning the same thing of course). In the case of "random", it's deployed to describe something surprising or unexpected. Which is incorrect. Random means "not specific".

Reboot – A term now commonly used to describe a "remake" of a movie. Initially this term was used to describe a process with a (Windows) computer that wasn't working. It was the "go to" instruction from IT gurus as the first thing to try ... to restart the wonky thing and hope for the best ... which psychologists will tell you is one of the prime indicators of insanity – repeating exactly the same thing and hoping for a different outcome.

Restarting a pile of shit will only result in the pile of shit to reappear in the same steaming heap it was before you restarted.

With Windows, it is recommended to use the literal meaning of reboot – re-apply your boot to the side of the useless thing. Then go to the store and get a Mac.

And so with movies, if you could actually "reboot" one, you would remake the movie shot-for-shot, using the same actors (and they'd have to be exactly the same age as they were the first time). What people mean when they say "reboot" is the movie is being "re-made" or "updated" – usually by someone with absolutely zero creativity or without a single original idea in his/her head, but who thinks by applying their own deft touch, and the latest technological marvel, their version of the original movie will miraculously be better.

Most often, this is not the case.

And now for something completely different ...

Vomit buckets – Not the nicest of concepts. But while in hospital most recently, one of my flatmates (I was in a room meant for four people) was a man with many issues. He had broken his shoulder badly, but also suffered from wonky kidneys (needing daily dialysis) and was a diabetic. His 24-hour routine involved trying to get him stable enough to move around a bit and hold some food down.

Usually at some point in the night, he would wake up and chunder his guts out. Volumes of it. And the item on hand, provided by hospital staff, to contain such eruptions? A shockingly small plastic bucket ... about the size of a large beer mug. The average amount of spew erupting from an unwell adult human far exceeds the capacity of such a thing. Anyone who has ever drank too much, or been sick with the flu, can attest to this fact: you need a decent sized bucket. As in the mop or dirt-digging variety.

And so it was bemusing to watch the nurses and orderlies repeatedly cleaning up after one of these biscuit-blasting sessions – the floor, his sheets and pillows, etc.

Graffiti – Here's a positive observation! Lately in Wellington, things like bus shelters and brick/cement have been festooned with art ... of the good kind. Not just the infantile scrawling of some punkass with a can of spray paint, but actual art.

Exhibit A: the closest bus shelter to my home –

The inside of this shelter is well done too – blue sky on the ceiling, and some other stuff on the walls. An exceptional example of what can happen when you hand kids the proper painting materials and encourage them to be creative.

Talking the talk – I pitied the poor fellow next to me in hospital this last time (not the serial puker from across the room, but another fellow on the same side of the room as me ... he was in for kidney issues) ... 

Charles was an older man, and really nice to chat to. Then one afternoon his wife showed up ... and holy christ on a crutch did this woman TALK. Wait, no, it wasn't talking ... it was a rapid-fire, incessant, ceaseless stream of neuron firings in her brain, spewing forth as words, without the benefit of that little filter most of us have to prevent such ceaseless, mindless babbling (most of us when we're sober, anyway) ....

The woman never shut up ONCE the whole time she was there. I was wondering if she was getting any oxygen at all, as she didn't seem to even stop to breathe. And she was there for a few hours. It was painful for ME to endure, but only for a short time, as I had the easy out of putting my earphones on and cranking up some music. She just went on, and on ... no two topics linking logically to each other. Just blathering. Sometimes she'd aim it at some poor hapless nurse or orderly. But mostly, the stream-of-consciousness babbling was aimed at the dude. And he was helpless to escape, confined to his bed ... 

FYI to my friends: if I ever end up in a relationship with a ceaseless, mindless babbler like this, you have my permission to shoot me ... if you don't get in quick enough to stop me from letting it become a relationship.

The change, it is not a-timing – Catching a cab ride home from two hospital trips ago, I realised I was about $1.50 shy of the fair once I got home. So I told the cabbie to put $9 on my ATM card (it was the day before payday), and I'd wobble into the house and get him the balance (from some change I knew  had on the dresser). 

This concept completely flummoxed him. He couldn't work out how to do this ... and after much blustering, he just told me the $9 on the bank card would suffice, as "time was money, and he had places to be!" 

This was at 1 pm in the middle of a week day. I boarded his taxi, which was the first in line of no less than 12 other taxis, all parked up and idling away the day in front of the hospital. 

I guess they pay taxi drivers to sit there in big lineups now. Good gig, pal. You don't want to be late for that!

Stand back, we're from the government – All hail the NZ Federal Government! Just when all seemed lost ... to save Auckland rugby fans from a repeat of the massive debacle of the Auckland city council being completely unprepared for the transportation screw-ups of the first World Cup Rugby game, the government stepped in to handle things.

During that first night, thousands of fans were left stranded on broken trains (after being brow-beaten into taking said wonky transit by Auckland city council) ... many not making it for the Opening Ceremonies OR the actual game. Trains sat dead in their tracks, and the news had excellent coverage of people breaking out of the trains after a few hours trapped inside, to crawl up along rocky cliffs strewn with bits of railway metal and detritus, to wedge their way through fences, to try their best to get to the game ... 

After a week of embarrassment being repeatedly shown on TV, and the municipal government types being grilled by the news media, the City Council was duely informed that the feds would take it from here, thanks.

Because, when things go wrong and aren't running smoothly, a bigger form of government is who you want on the case to fix things ...

How the cocky have fallen – After watching an inspired Canadian rugby squad defy the odds and win a thrilling Pool Game opener against Tonga (classy win guys!), we were treated to the spectacle of the cockiest (for no good reason) mouthpiece of the whole tournament getting his ass handed to him. 

Australian Wallabies captain and general dirt-bag and mealy-mouthed malcontent Quade Cooper was humiliated in the finest style, when he and the rest of the Wallabies were humbled by a ramped-up Ireland side. 

Ireland played an excellent game, outclassing the wobbly Roos, and were helped along in their cause with Cooper throwing up a few choice "bricks" in attempted cutesy one-handed flick passes ... including the last one, into the hands of an Ireland player, as the clock wound down to 80 minutes.

Looks good on you, you mouthy prick. Enjoy your quarter-final elimination round facing South Africa.

Windows crashed again – No, not the oft-maligned (and rightfully so) Micro$erf operating system. 

Actual windows. The kind you see through. In my house.

I've been plagued with the old (some would say "well past their prime") windows in this heritage house falling out of the frames. Twice now the bifold ones facing out and down into Aro Valley have been sucked out of the frame by wind ... and twice now, my landlord Dean has had to clamber down the über-steep cliff to retrieve said window. The second time, the pane of glass actually broke.

These windows are held in place by what can only be best described as hope ... they're just wedged into the frame and secured by a couple of $2 flimsy metal latches. With two sessions of the things NOT staying put, it's safe to say this scheme isn't working.

Yesterday when my friend Brandon drove me home from hospital, we sat out on the patio to enjoy the sun and sensational vista of my view down into Aro Valley, and out to Wellington Harbour.

As I've done quite a few times on sunny days, I popped open one of the bedroom windows, and played music via a set of speakers hooked up to an Apple Airport Express. It was an excellent day ... until, without warning, the window completely separated from the hinges in the frame, fell to the patio, and shattered. There was no wind, the window just sagged off the hinges and splintered all to hell.

I now have the utmost in home security,

with the amazing TitaniumCardboardBox™

window screen! Totally burglar and wind proof!

Note the hinges with

screws still hanging there.

Closeup view of the rotted window frame

where the screws just waved bye-bye.

The old n' busted window. Brandon was

a champ and swept up all the busted glass so I

didn't hazard stepping into it with my one good foot,

which just had a toe cut off of it.

I have a txt message into the landlord about the window, so we'll see how long it takes for this one to get fixed. Good thing I'm home for the week with my recovering foot. 

Things fall apart – Aside from the glaringly obvious with the window saga above, it's been a few weeks with lots of things just breaking or failing to work. Maybe it's something to do with the spring equinox (cue the Styx album ...) 

With this latest hospital visit being the FOURTH one in two months, I did spend a week or so at work between this one and the last. Demons doth vex me ... the sort of demons in charge of busting up shit.

My work computer took a major dump (I suspect meddling by incompetent IT weasels), my network connection to the material I would be working on took a similar crap, the elevators at work went from slow to glacial ... and the air-conditioning (ha ha) system in the building went from Hades Blast Furnace to Meat Locker and back again ... 

Busses to and from work moved like sedated snails through molasses ... I couldn't do my usual walk to work as my foot was slowly melting down (not quite at "going to hospital" level yet, but almost there) ... 

At home, light bulbs continue to pope at a prodigious rate. This may or may not be the work of a cheeky poltergeist. Enroute to work one day, with iPad in backpack, the yoghurt in a container decided now was a good time to make a break for it, and exploded all over the iPad case ... and, the inside of the pack. That was a good two hours of cleaning. Thankfully the iPad remained unharmed (yet still smells faintly of Berries Of The Forest).

In a doomed attempt to clean up for a district nurse visit a couple of weeks ago, my vacuum just sputtered and died in the middle of it (it's always a good idea to tidy up before a DN visit, because if your place is too much of a tip, they have you committed and sent back to hospital!)

So some of my surfing this week was along various websites of stores that carry vacuums. I have one picked out ... 

Ah and an external hard drive packed it in too. So I need another one to be the 'workhorse' that holds all my downloads, and regularly runs my music, movies and TV shows. More spending ... 

Well that should be enough whinging for now. 

A new week beckons – home alone (with the cats) waiting for my newly-piggyless foot to heal.

Oh and the piggy that bit the dust? 

"Stayed Home".

This little piggy stayed home ... for good.