Waking up, still not dead. Damn.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED
I'm sure that one day, while I'm enjoying the convenience of modern al-fresco dining, that I'll be able to look at this time and laugh. I won't be able to do that today though, I hurt too much for that. In fact I hurt too much for much of anything at all - I assume that those bits of me that don't ache were surgically removed from my body sometime on Friday night and were only reattached last night. Everything else had to endure moving a large pile of crushed rock from the front of the house to the back of the house, one wheelbarrow load at a time on Saturday.

Sunday was the day when the fun really began when the timber frame for the paving stone deck was slapped together and the pile of crushed rock was spread out to all parts of the frame interior. Just when I thought that things couldn't possible get any worse than I had endured, reality strolled up behind me and subjected to to a savage, brutal mugging. I don't know what I have done to earn the distaste, ire and downright blatant hostility of anything to do with hardware but it must have been major.

Yesterday it was the turn of a hired flat plate compacter to subject me to misery without end. Not content with having its motor splutter and die every 6 seconds on average it then decided that the only way possible that it was even going to approach working was if I lifted the back end of it up so that the back of the plate had no chance of harming its delicate surface with the likes of tangible work. Compacting that layer of rock involved being stuck in the middle of the wrong end of a biceps curl while man-handling an irrationally murderous mass of petrol powered metal up and down the decking to be.

The icing on the cake from all of this? Finding out that we need more crushed rock, and that Jennie will be ordering it for Wednedsay delivery. My plans for much of this week are now as follows:

• Monday - Wake up, curse the fact that I'm still alive, go to work, come home, move a large pile of sand from the front of the house to the back of the house, collapse in the lounge room, pray for death and then go to bed,
• Tuesday - Wake up, curse the fact that I'm still alive, go to work, come home, move 32 square meters of paving stones from the front of the house to the back of the house, collapse in the lounge room, pray for death and then go to bed,
• Wednesday - Wake up, curse the fact that I'm still alive, go to work, come home, move more of that fuckinig crushed rock from the front of the house to the back of the house, spread that rock out for compacting, collapse in the loungeroom, pray for death and then go to bed,
  
• Thursday - Slip into a coma and then fade gently into death. Or, wake up and curse the fact that I'm still alive should I prove to be less than fortunate... Plough through the rest of the day with a smile on my lips (rictus of horror) and a song in my heart (silent shriek of pained terror) as I wait with breathless anticipation for the new trial of pain to be given...
  

Should I die this week I'd just like Jennie to know that I hate that fucking plate compacter, I really do.

A view from far, far outside the cage.

"ECONOMY" IS THE WATCHWORD
There's a part of me that has begun to really admire the sheer, bloody-minded level of consistency that the U.S Republican Party has shown in its choice of Vice President since 1988. Back in the dying days of The Cold War they gave us Dan Quayle - A man of extraordinary qualities I'm sure, provided that you were able to stop laughing at him long enough to actually find them. I'm still laughing. From 1988 until 1992 the leadership of the free world was a single assassin's bullet away from devolving to the sort of specimen that should have been expelled from the human race for failing the drug test. (He was tested and found to not be on any of them, thus the epic fail).

Fast forward to 2000 - mainly because I can't remember who the Republicans shoved into the arena after Bush (the Lesser) and Quayle (the bewildered) lost to Clinton and Gore, which marked the victory of Bush (the Least) and Cheney over Gore and somebodyorother. Once again, in fine tradition, the office of Vice President was occupied by someone who can only be described as ... "gifted", and was the perfect pairing for a former cocaine and booze hound of gargantuan proportions from Texas. It was amusing to watch, after a certain fun-filled hunting trip involving Mr Cheney, a firearm and a badly misplaced hunting companion, the members of the Secret Service keeping a paranoid eye on the VP, just in case he tried something against the President. (Who would you shoot, and how many times?)

If you go to the woods today, you're in for a big surprise,
As the Vice President shoots you between the eyes..

Now we have Sarah Palin. The sort of politician that has comedians the world over coming in their collective socks in sheer, unbridled joy. I'll admit, I'm a fan - But only because I enjoy watching this sort of train wreck in action secure in the knowledge that I'm not there. It's like somehow the Republican Party managed to grab everything that's memorable about Quayle (dim, without the charm of Gomer Pyle to make it work for him), Dubya (ignorant as sin and as thick as a bag of frozen pig shit) and Cheney (bad news with firearms no matter what species you are) and rolled them into a one-size-fits all bag of genetic defects before giving it as a running mate to John McCain who, from latest accounts, probably needed a guide dog to help him fly his plane properly back in Vietnam.

Bleaugh!

A PICTURE OF HEALTH
Ahh, spring! How I love this time of year. The football season is a memory, finishing with my football team crashing out of the finals, the Grand Final's been and gone (and gone to bloody Hawthorn) and that brief 2 month period in the year when I don't have some form of lung infection is just around the corner. Love it! I am so looking forward to going through a day where I'm not trying to cough up a lung, my lunch, and the soles of my shoes. Of course, for a brief period of time things had the potential to be so much worse...

I have to admit that there was a small part of me that was a little disappointed when I got the result of my CT scan back with negative results. I was really looking forward to telling the tale of how, for a brief, shining moment in my life, my clumsiness was responsible for saving my life instead of trying to bring it to a premature and humiliating close. Sigh. Just once I thought that the pain, the frequent and hard to explain (to an audience that isn't collapsed in laughter) injuries, the indignity and the massive social cost would have been justified in some small measure. Instead my lungs, apart from being full of the byproduct of another chest infection, are totally clear of anything remotely threatening, and the fact that I trip over everything (including misplaced oxygen molecules) is but a part of the burden that I have to carry as part of being me.

HORRORZ ON THE INTERNETZ
My brother introduced me to an absolute gem of a web-site the other day, Encyclopedia Dramatica, which is what Wikipedia would be like if it were written by a crazed collection of smutty-minded, juvenile adolescents. Prowling through the pages on this site (such as entries for Melbourne, the United Nations, pwn and lulz) is to be let off the e-leash into a world where karmas are crushed, sacred cows are lined up for slaughter and dogmas of all varieties are subject to surprise buttsex. It's wildly entertaining in places, quite a lot of them in fact, but parts of it are also like the sensation you get when you hit your feet with a hammer time and time again - It feels so good when you stop. You must be cautious, some stuff there is not suitable for minors, not suitable for the office environment and probably not suitable for anyone who enjoys polite conversation. This place has many parts that are electronic equivalent of a toxic waste dump - It's rough, it's libelous, it's probably an abomination before the eyes of God and it's funny as hell.

Final warning:

It has direct links to goatse, and no! I won't be linking to it (or sleeping comfortably at at night ever again).