Invasive Species

Bah.

For an uncomfortably long amount of time last night I had what felt like, at least whilst it continued, either (a) an anxiety fit or worse (b) a minor heart attack - got home feeling utterly stressed and winded, then before dinner my chest tightened up, breath was very short, was hunched over and could barely move.

I stumbled through dinnertime not telling the husband how awful I felt, then retreated to bed figuring it was just boxed-up stress. I closed my eyes & tried to calm down, which seemed to work. nverzeanu, though, having had a dad who died at 42 of a sudden heart attack, bullied me into calling the doctor today once I told him the extent of my evening's joy.

So after work, I went in to see the doc prepared to sheepishly say what a weepy wuss I am, and how I'd brokenhearted myself into a Felix Unger-like neurotic-menace episode. The handsome doctor (who I think I groped in a sauna once, I can't be sure; we both seemed to recognise each other from ... somewhere ... but I digress) agreed it sounded more like stress: I mentioned Weensie going so close to the anniversary of Todd's death, and what a long week it's been, but given the family background of the men of my dad's family carking it early on via heart attacks & strokes & wotnot, he ran some tests anyway to be sure.

The heart was absolutely fine. The breathing test, though, was allegedly textbook asthma results.

I remain dubious and convinced the doctor just wanted to pawn off more meds on me in exchange for some kickbacks from the pharmaceutical megacorporations or something. Nick however says Australia is legendary for bringing asthma on to people who never had it before. Charrrrrming.

This might make sense as to why I sometimes get suddenly winded on low rises up a street whilst Nick is walking ahead absolutely fine. Still, I never had anything like feeling out of breath all the time or anything, and definitely never one of those melodramatic wheezewheezegaaaaasp moments like one sees in all those Hollywood tv dramas where the asthmatic wuss clutches at his throat, falling to earth as his quivering, clawing hand falls Just Short Of The Inhaler .... fade to commercial. Though maybe I have been short of breath for a while now, and it came on and settled in so slowly that I adapted & never noticed. Well, until last night.

We'll see; all this has only been over the last 24 hours and I dunno if the inhaler thing I tried for the first time really did make me feel easier breathing when we got back from dinner a few minutes ago and I still felt short of breath, or if it was psychosomatic power-of-suggestion on my weak little mind. I refuse to admit my chest has relaxed immensely even as I've been typing this.

Bah.

So, in the course of the past few months and in the next few weeks I will have become flat-footed, asthmatic, and 45 years old. HUZZAH. HERE COMES YOUR DREAMBOAT.

Bah.

Sometimes the purest escapism is the best, actually.



One of the greatest moments in all animation, for little Yuri. Snoopy is so cool he almost makes me weep. I mean, while laughing with joy.

Found this pic of Todd and Weensie napping together under the covers, a million years (well, it was 1994) ago. 11 July is the anniversary of Todd's death, 14 years ago (yarzeit, as they say in things Jewish) - no more fitting time to put this up, then.



Rest together, old friends. The world can't leave you weakened any more.

For me, I'm hunkering down with my patient understanding Nick and some Beethoven, and just lying low. Hopefully tomorrow I can start crawling out of this bleak mood's season and be better company again.

I get up early in the morning, still intending to get his special OldGuy food & make sure he eats. I com home from work and wait to see him walking to the door from his perch on the sofa where he'd waited for me. I stop around the dacha, thinking I ought to be doing something, or something's been forgotten, something's missing - and I remember. And then in bed I keep moving the pillow further in, so he can get to his favourite spot by my head easily and lie down for a snooze.

Got home from work last night and all I could do was wander the dacha, sighing forlornly and curling up on the couch. Went to bed at 8.30. That was that.

Poor li'l galoot. I know it was his time and all - his kdneys, the vet said, were going into total failure, his back legs were giving out completely, he was confused and unsure about everything around him except maybe me, who he'd still try to follow from room to room. Any attempts at prolonging things by hydration or medicinal injections would only keep him in bleary acheyness, and not for long anyway - it was time. And so the last good thing I could do for him was the worst - let him go, watch the needles go in, watch him give one last sigh and stop forever.

The only good to come out of this is to realise my blackened withered cruel little heart still has enough left in it to break.

Dax, Princess Of Absolutely Everything, the beautiful (if now hitting a bit of middle-aged spread in her once-demure tummy) Abyssinian who is my stepcat by virtue of marriage, obviously knows something's up and is being extra-attentive to me. Trouble is that, unlike The Magnificent Weensie, she's one of those boneless LOVEMELOVEME writhers whose purrs can fill the room - wonderful fun if you're snuggling abed or acouch in an early evening, but at 3am one longs for a more relaxed old buddy curled up calmly by one's face, letting one rest. But bless her for being extra-loving regardless. She's a good cat - though I dunno if she can ever enter my Feline Pantheon completely, due to her never forgiving Weensie for coming into her household, and doing the bitchy hiss-and-run thing from him up til the very end. But ... cats; whaddya gonna do.

Already talk & mention of "when we get another cat", but considering it took me ten years to wait to risk a new husband after the other one died on me, I figure I might take some time. At least til I know I wouldn't adopt another and then resent the fact that it didn't act just like The Magnificent One. That said, local Sydney Tonkinese breeders have many enticing websites. Once the emotions and lingering shed cat-hairs settle, we'll see.

For now it's buck up, get through the current emotional boo-hoo-itude, and put George Harrison's gentle li'l tune "All Things Must Pass" on endless repeat.

My Paso Robles pussycat, cowboy kitty, little buddy, great big bodyguard, best cat ever.
Ironic you went into hospital for the last time on the very same day Todd did, 14 years ago.
Go keep him warm, like you did when he was sick.
And both of you, watch over and wait for me.

Warning: another LJ post about one's pet here; nothing for fussy LJ-Topic Police to see here, they may move along.

The Magnificent Weensie rallied a bit last night; he's started eating the mushy after-surgery food the vet gave me to try to entice him to eat at least something. I even got a few "good morning, feed me" brrrps and chirps this a.m., which he hasn't bothered with for a long time. He's still very disoriented - I have to wave the dish right in his face a few minutes to get him to notice it, but at least once he does take notice, he's licking it all up.

I can get him to drink by sitting next to him and splashing/swishing the water around in the bowl, otherwise he seems to think it's not there, or at least not be interested. Maybe I'll run up to the pet store around the corner and get one of those electric make-the-water-cycle-and-fountain sort of water dishes. Couldn't hurt, I guess; all cats prefer running water to standing.

His back legs are wobbly and disobedient, but the food seems to have given him enough of a zip that he can jump up on the downstairs bed where I slept last night, since he seems to like that one better (climbing the stairs to the bedroom loft is probably an annoyance to the poor guy). He even burrowed under the quilts all by himself a few times.

He's currently back to his curled-up-on-the-throw-covered-hot-water-bottle snooze in front of the fire.

If I can keep him rallied and eating/drinking through the weekend, we may have bought some more time for the little guy. I'm trying to walk the fine line between bleakness, optimism, and delusion.

The Magnificent Weensie is not doing well at all. At 17, he's been on a very good run for a basic cat grabbed from a 'free kittens' box in front of a Paso Robles CA supermarket - one infection once, but otherwise nary a single illness or health issue. But this past week, he seems to have decided it's time for a downhill run.

He was having kidney troubles for a while, minor - just extra medicine-y food and the vet said that would do. And indeed the previous week or two, he seemed if anything to perk up. His recent fussbudgetry was gone, he'd nom his food down and hit the water bowl with gusto. Then he hit reverse about four or five days past. No huh-WHEY would he eat his food, unless I put it atop the water bowl, when he'd suddenly notice and chomp away. Then a few tepid moments of interest in the water, but mostly putting his face to it and not drinking.

Finally the last two nights he's tried to jump up onto the bed to sleep by the side of my face like he's done for 17 years, and fell back with a scramble as he couldn't get the musclepower up. I picked him up and burrowed him under the blankets like he's always liked, and that was that.

So this morning I took him into the vet, a nice sympathetic Teutonic fraulein who's (along with her fellow vet the rawther hawt Marcus, rowr-rowr) treated him for the past two years since we got the cats to Oz. She was nice but said basically, "he's very very old." His weight had halved since his last visit a month past, he was dehydrated, disoriented - she looked in his eyes and said they were very sunken and he looked 'not quite there'.

I asked if this meant a daily shot - mentioned in other visits if the kidney food failed - and she said, probably not, though some folks have tried daily hydration with needles and such but it's not a very good quality-of-life thing for the cat. And I don't want to prolong anything if he lingers rather than lives.

She gave it a shot - literally - gave him a steroid shot, a vitamin injection, hydrated him. I took a walk around Balmain (Centre Of The Universe) whilst she did all this monitoring him, me looking at shop windows in near tears.

I got back to her and her assistant in jubilation - "he's eating! he's drinking water!" She said really, there's not much more she could do or recommend; just keep an eye on him 'for the next day or two' to see if he bounces back.

I got him home, he went to the water dish and guzzled a whole lotta water. Then jumped onto the couch where I'd stuffed a hot water bottle under a blanket, curled up, and went to sleep.

Two hours later, he was still there, curled up. I tried to give him more food at dinnertime. He refused. Stared at the water bowl. Walked back to the couch, jumped up, closed his eyes. Back to the usual state of affairs.

I tried to get him to at least lick some of this vitamin goo the vet gave me if he refused to eat, but same refusenik thing. So I'm going to give him a little bit more time and try to at least wedge some of that into his mouth and get him to eat it.

Then, not much to do but monitor him tomorrow and plan for what seems increasingly inevitable. He's been my best little buddy 17 years, since my Dearly Departed put his hand into the 'free kittens' box and Weensie marched fearlessly up to it whilst his siblings mewed and cowered in a corner. He's followed me all over the planet. He's my last living link to Todd. I'll miss him horribly if it's time for him to go too.

Forgive me LiveJournal, I know not what I did. I posted the pic below on Facebook first! Forgive me, O LJ; thou art my first and best online personal thimgumabob.

Aaaaanyway ....

HOW UTTERLY COOL. A prof at my workplace rescues/raises stray Aussie birds. So there I was, admin assistanting away, when our office door opens, and in walks Sylvia (the prof) with an eclectus [sp?] parrot on her arm. These are utterly beautiful Aussie parrots - females red and blue, males green and blue - and this one was remarkably calm and well-behaved.

Birdwatcher that I am, I follow adoringly and pet and coo and otherwise fawn on the thing. As Sylvia continues chatting with my boss, the bird eyes me, looks at my arm, bobs her head, and crawls over the professor to get to me. She then proceeds to put out one foot tentatively, grabbing onto my jumper, then with a little hop jumps over to my arm. After a bit of studying and looking into my eyes, she slinked up, carefully, step by step, to my shoulder.

She stops and cocks her head at an odd (even for a parrot) angle - seems she is noticing strange reflections and lights in my glasses. She doesn't freak at all, but just watches me with a sort of studious curiosity. After I take off my glasses, she calms down and comes even closer.

I'm half-wondering if her ambition is not to take a bite out of my earlobe, but Sylvia says she (the parrot I mean) was raised by a man when she was rescued in the wild as a wounded abandoned hatchling, and ever since has had a preference for human males.

So for a few minutes, whilst the academics met, I got to stand with a beautiful bright crimson and blue parrot perched on my arms and shoulder, watching it sit calmly staring at me and burrowing its beak lightly into the knit of my jumper.

When it was time to go, she didn't want to be taken off my arm - only grudgingly jumping onto the professor's arm again after a few tries to convince her.

All in all a wonderful up-close experience with one of the native birds I love so much here.

Luckily my boss took a pic or two with his iPhone ...

In the US, growing up in the peasant class as I did, I was used to the idea of bikers. Heck, a few of my cousins were bikers. Big, fuzzy, grumbly, mean, barbrawling bikers. So, I grew up knowing the connotations of the word, and the sort of fearful sound of it.

... then I come to Australia which has the same phenomenon - Hell's Angels, Bandidos, club houses and chapters and drug deals gone bad and weapons charges and brawls and mysterious burnings-of-down. OK.

But I can't quite take it as seriously as in the States.

Why? Because here in Oz, they are not "bikers". They are ... "bikies".

I'm sorry, but my first impression isn't to run in terror from a "bikie", but to pat him on the head and giggle. Granted, I'm sure the worst elements here are just as brutish and unsavoury as their Yank counterparts. It's just the diminutive-sounding word choice. "Look out! Bikies!!!" would have me looking down to the footpath to make sure my legs weren't about to get entangled in a swarm of children on tricycles.

Which, of course, explains why I'm likely to be the first bystander bludgeoned to death in some bikerrrr... -kie ... turf war ("We shouted a warning ... he just tittered and wouldn't move, the eedjit"). Chalk my demise up to linguistics. And cremate my corpsie and scatter my ashies somewhere pretty.

Gawd, when did I become middle-aged and reasonably responsible?

Saturday we had a delightful, non-chaotic, small 'do at the dacha, inviting the neighbours on our little dead-end street (cul de sac! cul de sac!!!!) for wine and cheese and teddibly posh snackies. We got a decent turnout - pretty much the ones I wanted to get to know better were the ones who showed, and it was a cool friendly gathering. I didn't realise how many musos we have on the street. One moment I'm talking with the guy across the road from us about GarageBand; next thing the couple from the end of the street have run back to their house & returned with an antique shell-decorated mandolin and eBay'd 'spensive acoustic gee-tar, and everyone's noodling away on something (even the cross-the-roaders' two daughters, hammering away on Nick's piano). Geoff (across-the-road) mentioned a fun basic cover band that plays at a pub down Victoria Road on Sunday afternoons, let's go sometime, &c &c.

Much wine was consumed and yet it didn't turn into a teenage piss-up; just a bit more relaxed in the conversations. All ended close to dinnertime; houses were stumbled back unto, many vows of socialising more. And sure enough, yesterday arvo I recalled that cover band at the nearby pub, and Nick and I were at our door about to wander up to check it out, when there was a knock and our neighbour was there seeing if we were up for a walk to that very same hotel. So, off we went. And lo, it was fun. I mean, not high art, not cutting-edge innovative creativity, but the band was fun, plucking rock songs from various eras and generally giving the working class Balmain crowd (yes! apparently there's still some left) a good time. Geoff had been praising the guitarist - who was quite good - but the singer impressed me even more. First impression was, what a wanker - lots of stadium arm waving gestures, long schmancy scarf around his neck - but as he relaxed and rolled with stuff, he was down to earth and having a ball and man, could he sing - not too prettyprettypyrotechnic; just a great range and ability to cover lots of different basic barband/cover/nostalgic stuff. Yeah, he handled Freddie Murcury well blah blah, but when they did some old Cream stuff and he kept up a nicely-toned Jack Brucey vocal, I was impressed (we shall not speak of the biggest crowdpleaser, a note-perfect version of Billy Jo ... ack ... Billy J ... J ... retch ... that song "You May Be Right", which caused several mullets to get up and do an odd sort of wobbling, undulating dance).

So we had to cut out early to get to other friends' place for dinner. Home cooked chicken!, and just hanging around their living room half-watching tv and talking. Then back to the dacha at a reasonable bedtime hour, put some Rachmaninoff on the stereo whilst we prepped for beddybye, and off to snoozola-land.

Oh! Most grownuppity of all, our cross-the-road neighbours just had a whole bunch of renovations, and passed along the names of some of the workers they were most happy with to us, since there's always a wish list of stuff around the dacha to smarten up. So before heading out to said coverbanded pub, we had a visit from A Kitchen Guy and we stood around looking at samples of cupboards and pantries and counters and re-design and blah blah kitchen fixing up & remodeling &c &c &c ... as he left it hit me, I'm a settled middleaged homeowner who'd just schmoozed with neighbours and was about to wander up the road to a local pub to watch guys younger than me play older songs.

I'd have thought by now I'd be on my third Guggenheim Grant, or well past my young tragic death mourned by the literary world, or something. But no, I'm just discussing whether Sand or Zulu would be a better stone pattern for the kitchen counter. Ah well. Life is what happens when you least expect it. A blink or two and here you are. Old and settled. Fetch me my gruel of burning gold, get me my walker of fire ...

Dear Grim Reaper,

How are you? I am fine. Glad to say we have not been in touch for a while. I'm sure you're a swell fellow, but let's keep it that way. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Just writing to congratulate you on taking a moment (recent death of Sky Saxon aside) from culling the artists and pop figures of the 1960s and 1970s and turning your attentions, this morning, to that more wretched and target-worthy decade, the 1980s.

While I'm sure it's an effort, and you're probably hoping for a bit of rest after another of your celebrity herd-thinnings, I thought I'd offer a few suggestions as long as you seem to be taking a break from offing various Beatles and Ramones and garage/psychedelic figures who sonically shaped an era, and may now finally be turning your attention to the levellers and pasteurisers of a daily-worse-in-retrospect time.

If you're happy with today's work, and deciding on an 80s theme for a while, might I suggest continuing with:

Dave Stewart. The other half of pop duo The Captain and Tenil- err, I mean, the Eurythmics (always get them mixed up) whose banal plushtowel-of-sound production was anodyne enough on his own faux-artsy recordings with that Dusty Springfield impersonator, but he went on to pretend he was a "producer" and destroy dozens of other recordings through the decade, numbing and synthpopping them into banality. Haven't heard much from him lately, but just in case, extruding him from the realm of possibility would be nice.

Jeff Lynne. Another who showed some promise during his amusing semi-prog-rock days of early ELO, but slowly withered into slick pop banality and then further, in the 80s, into a one-productive-trick-pony of chugchugchug rhythm track smothered in smooth layers of radio-friendliness, no matter who he was doing production duties for. Another destroyer - he even managed to make Dave Edmunds' music lame; one is almost impressed by such a staggering act of evil. He is for some bizarre reason still well-connected and regarded, and could still strike again; please eliminate him.

Billy Joel. Cashing in on the sensitive-balladeer wave of the 1970s, this infestation lodged in the pop stream like a lurking virus, only to break out in its full two dimensions and wrap around the pop charts' d.n.a. as unshakeably as HIV for a few debilitating years there. Assaulted the sound waves with deceptively meaningful-sounding, millimeter-deep jingle after jingle through that putrid decade. Although he's finally sunk into nostalgia-circuit oblivion, the thought of him out there, somewhere, waiting to sing to someone, fills one with dread. Make this a better world, Reaper, and top him.

Phil Collins. The 80s were full of b-list popsters emerging into the soul-stultifying flourescent overhead light of the decade. Cashing in on his old boss Peter Gabriel's idea of removing all the cymbals from his drum set, this session musician tagger-of-along to the 70s art crowd (Eno, Fripp, &c) revealed himself as a stealth assassin, twisting a dull knife into music with his drumming gimmick taking the place of actual creativity and fooling an already-lulled-by-MTV populace into thinking he was somehow innovative whilst he wheezed snivelling button-down ballads laced with synth strings to the obedient consumer hordes. His tranquilising hit job on The Supremes' classic "You Can't Hurry Love" alone should have had a second-string Mark David Chapman waiting by his doorway, yet somehow this worthy fate escaped him. So far. Please, Mr Reaper, rectify.

Stevie Nicks. See Phil Collins above. A 70s mediocrity who only blossomed next decade into true bleary repetitive predictable slicketypop with a well-marketed mask of phony witchiepoo spunkiness to give her a smokescreen of legitimacy. Whilst she seems to be fairly quiet these days (perhaps still dizzy from all that spinning around in a cloud of cocaine & spooky black lace in her all-alike MTvideos), she could slither forth any moment for a retro-camp duet with something from American Idol. Best quiet her for good, no?

Duran Duran (all of them). No real need for explanation here. 80s frauds with hairdos that the masses were told to purchase. They dutifully did, and took up valuable radio time from other bands ... almost any other bands ... that might have recently released a record.

Axl Rose. Just when those listed above had stomped rock and roll dead, this creature wrapped himself in its still-warm skin and pretended to actually be it. Got away with it for a while, until Nirvana came along to show the corpse wasn't quite dead, put the clamps to it, yelled "pull!" and gave us a year or two more of life jolted out of the old thing. We thought we were rid of this listee, but he actually got that stupid record released! He must be stopped before he does something again.

Sting. Pompous self-important/self-deluded ninny who was never relevant nor intellectually towering nor innovative, yet still is convinced he not only was so, but remains so! Ha. Ha. Ha. Any man who pompously rips off the plot of a Nabokov novel, and then clubs us with a name-dropping reference to that book inside the song to make sure we know how literary and cultured he is, was past his use-by date before hooting those insipid lyrics anyway. Convinced that he's saved the world and its culture multiple times, despite all evidence of the massive damage he's caused with his easy-listening hits and smooth elevator jazz impersonations instead (thinks he's Coltrane, sounds like Christopher Cross). Even when he reunited with his old bandmates (he apparently used to be the bass player for Andy Summers' band), they didn't bother pretending to enjoy being onstage with him, as most nostalgia acts do for the sake of a paycheck. He must be a worthless human being if this happens. Please help save the earth, Mr Reaper, and rid us of this twit.

Bono. While slightly more effective in his cause-peddling than Mr Gordon Sting above, his pompousness and calculation-deep sincerity in an endless spate of recordings consisting of three droned guitar notes and layers of overproduction that has stretched since one or two actually-marginally-entertaining singles back at the very dawn of the horrid age known as the 1980s are not only responsible for the pasteurisation and mediocritisation of what was left calling itself rock as the teeny rats of overdone pop slowly gnawed away the sonic landscape, he and his back-up band are single-handedly responsible for sucking the soul out of Brian Eno himself and turning him from genius to hack line-producer for boring monochromatic arena-rock(ish) bands. This last is the worst of possible sins, and for it, Mr Reaper, this man is long-overdue for a visit from you.

Madonna. I applaud your first effort in undoing the horrors of that decade, sir, but offer as an equally-deserving target of your scythe this thing. Along with Jackson, this well-marketed product was more than anyone responsible for the over-the-top shallowness and mundanity that turned the creaky floorboards Eddie Cochran's feet once slapped against to the videoscreenlight-saturated linoleum that so many easily-influenced regarded as a legitimate foundation for pop music. She and the megacorporations behind her (happy to see someone willing to whore themselves for nothing other than attention and fame, and not likely to rebel against their requirements for bankrolling her as long as they shoveled said attention at her in piles) fooled the masses into thinking a change of costume was artistic re-invention, and buying a different disco producer to slick up her latest product and write her video soundtracks for her was growth as an artist. Single-handedly the biggest nail in the crucifixion of all that was true and good and right in pop/rock-and-roll. I don't know if your vast powers include time travel, sir, but if your scythe can reach back retroactively and cull her from the sands of time before she entered a recording studio, I'd be ever so grateful.

Anyway, Mr Reaper, a long and demanding list. I'm sure you want to kick back and have a nice cold beer as reward for today's solid work instead, so I'll just say congratulations and leave these requests as friendly suggestions. I know we've had our major rows in the past, but every now and then you seem to make an effort to make things up a bit.

See you later. well, maybe not "see". Just sneak up and tap me on the shoulder. When it comes to encountering you, I'd rather be surprised.

Thanks again,
Yuri

... well, no, not really, although it is one of Robert Plant's better lines in the history of his over-the-top-high-school-notebook lyrics. The soul of the woman who sat next to me on the bus this morning, however, was.

My dear husband went into work early this a.m., so his journey workward would coincide with mine. Hurrah! We could ride the bus together. Alas, had to run to another bus stop to get a new ticket as the spot we usually get them was out. I'd luckily gotten mine yesterday (see last entry) - for lo, the magazine shop was sold out today. Nick scooched off to another shop, saying he'd meet me on the bus.

I go to my usual stop. Get on the 442. Plenty of open seats. Next stop, a few more get aboard. A woman chooses, out of all the seats available, the one next to me. I wasn't about to say "this one's taken! Begone!" because gawd knows if Nick got caught up at the shop, or caught a different bus, or summat. So I sat and read and seethed in a passive-aggressive fashion as she fuddled about with a large baggy purse and then shiffled and rattled a wad of graph-splattered papers with magisterial importance, elbowing me with irksome regularity.

Nick gets on at the next stop. Managed to sit in front of me, so that was nice. But then - then! - as we got over the Anzac Bridge and reached his stop, and he rose to depart, and I tried to make eye contact to wave goodbye at least, this evil and wicked woman stood up to depart too, and hovered in that wobbly "I'm walking but I'm not moving but I'll shift from side to side a lot because that will magically make foot traffic move forward smoothly" manner that bothers me so, moreso because she basically eclipsed any sight I had of my poor husband as he set forth into the cruel chilly outside world, without waves or smile from me who'd failed him utterly ALL BECAUSE OF HER.

So of course I grimly cursed her (silently) and spat on her grave (metaphysically). Grr; etc.

Noble womankind, however, redeemed itself on the second leg of my commute, as I got to sit behind the breast-possessed equivalent of The Muppet Show's Statler & Waldorf. I was annoyed at first by the incessant chatter of two old women in the seats in front of me - nonstop yammering as both maintained a steady set of monologues only occasionally noticed by the other - until I began to penetrate the dense thick-squawkin'-Aussie accents, the cool deep-bush/semi-Cockney kind that was much more prevalent before the onslaught of too much American tv began to wear down and flatten speech patterns & the Down Under accent(s). I slowly realised they were both keeping up a steady stream of mocking, abusive commentary on every passerby outside and every new passenger to board the bus. Luckily their vocabulary and invective was old-school creative and not simply insulting, a cross between the aforementioned Statler & Waldorf and Monty Python's East End bawdy broads so well-played by Terry Jones.

Statlette: Looka that one.
Walda: Quite the fashion, him.
Statlette: Gets a new hairstyle before the old hairstyle even grown out.
Both: Heee ... heeheeheehee.

Statlette (as pedestrian runs across four lanes of traffic well away from a crosswalk, the bus barely missing him): Ooh, there goes another one that never pay attention.
Walda: Wouldn't feel sorry for him if the bus ran him over.
Statlette: Splat! One less twit out there, that's for sure.
Walda: Get where we want to go faster, too.
Both: Heee ... heeheeheeheehee ...

Good curmudgeonry always cheers my withered blackened heart. God/dess/es/ElvisJohnny O'Keefe bless those two dinky-di old Aussie dames. May I amuse myself as well at their age ...

Tuesday is the day I get a new weekly bus pass. Today being that very day, the day upon which accomplishing the required deed falls, I dutifully went to the magazine shoppe up the street from the dacha and bought a nice crispy fresh virginal Weekly Red Zone Bus Pass.

I wait for the bus. The bus comes.

I alight innocently, put the pass into the little ticket-reading machine. The machine ... beeps. Not a good beep; no. This is the "expired ticket" beep that makes the driver upset and call out informatively, "someone's pass has expired." With no room for confusion (i.e. someone else putting theirs through directly after mine and leaving doubt as to whose pass caused the machine to emit its cruel beep), it was plain that it was me, and my pass, that had caused shame and scandal to descend.

Only problem, of course, was that the pass was brand new.

"This pass," I duly informed the driver as I retraced my steps to the front of the bus, "is brand new."
She ran it through her ticker reader. Beep.
"Hmm," she said. Ran it through some other handheld sort of reading device. Beep, it beeped, spewing out what looked like some sort of store receipt to boot.

"Maybe I just got a bad ticket," I said, and offered to go back to the shop and catch the next bus.
"This is odd," the surprisingly patient bus driver said, examining the pass. Used as I am to US bus drivers - bitter, bloated toadlike things with dead eyes, cruel pinched grimaces, incomprehensible verbiage (if they speak at all), eager to the last among them to thwart and dismay the commuter with a door slammed in their face or a lurch of the bus out of the stop with enough momentum to topple anyone off-balance or out of their seat - I was soothed by this woman's demeanour and impressed again (comparatively) by Australian mass transit. Especially when she looked the ticket over and, rather than yell at me or throw me off the bus (as a Yank driver would have, with accompanying accusations of some sort of criminal activity), simply said: "It seems to be already expired - the back says 16th of June, looks like it's been run through alread-"
"Ahhhh, ah ... ha-ha," I wheezed nervously as light dawned in the thick skull that houses my soft dim squishy brain. I leaned closer to her conspiratorially. "I just realised what the problem is."

From my book I extracted ... the new pass. The one I'd bought minutes earlier. It had been wedged there after purchase to distinguish it from the old one I kept in my usual "bus pass spot", the inside pocket of my coat. Out of habit, I'd grabbed the old one and run it through the machine, forgetting that Ben Jonson was guarding the new one within the pages of my used edition of The Divell is an Asse.

The driver gave me a pitying, exasperated look. I smiled sheepishly, and put the new card into the reader. Unsurprisingly, it clickittaclacked and re-emerged, beepless.

"Maybe," she said, "I'll just hold on to this old one." She put it next to the rolled-up readout that had slithered out of her handheld thingumybob.
"Please," I replied, "do. One embarrassment was enough." I stepped back as she studied me, perhaps for signs of idiocy or failed criminality of some sort. "Thank you," I added.

I walked as far to the back of the bus as I could and buried myself in obscure Jacobean comedy.

As the opening line of the play goes: "Hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, etc."

*sigh*

One of my great lost bands - when I was in Downspin Lane and sold off everything to flee to Prague after Todd died, one of my worst mistakes was not taping their Nightmare City lp before it disappeared in a yard sale fog. Never been able to find it (or word of them) again, YouTube video of this aside, no matter how internyetish I search.

Ah well. All past and life is fade of what regret and not-dones. I linger to watch my failures fester, and hear echoing rings of what-was.

Oh, no! I just read this via Exene Cervenka's website: -

June 2, 2009

After some months of not feeling 100% healthy, I recently had some medical tests run and the prognosis is that I am suffering from Multiple Sclerosis. Apparently, it has been affecting me for quite some time.

Although this is obviously unfortunate news, I am choosing to see the positive in it. I, and X as a band, have supported the Sweet Relief charity since the mid-1990's; the irony of this is not lost on any of us. Sweet Relief was started as an aide to uninsured artists by musician Victoria Williams when she herself was diagnosed with MS in 1992.

While this diagnosis will most certainly mean some changes for me, personally, it will not affect my commitments to the current X U.S. tour, nor will it affect my solo album that is slated for release this fall on Bloodshot Records.

My focus will certainly be on maintaining my health--many people remain strong and continue to live their lives as productively as they had before an MS diagnosis and I plan to be one of those people.

To find out more about Sweet Relief please visit: www.sweetrelief.org

To find out more about X please visit: www.xtheband.com

One of my all-time most admired poetic & musical favourites - I don't think the sonic ferocity of X was ever far away from my turntable for more than a few hours during the early 80s. She's always been kind, too, the couple of times I ran into her (she even stopped her band and made them do improvised back-up as she read selections from a poetry mag I was helping put together, a copy of which a friend forced into her hands onstage).

All concern and woowoovibes Exene-ward.

The hibernation instinct kicks in, & combines with my usual hermit urges to render me zombie-esque. Reading the weather service predict a month - a whole month - of grey chilly drear isn't helping. I read too much world news and get demoralised. It piles up and I torpor down.

Zzzzzzzzzero energy. Feel like I'm neck-deep in a swimming pool, trying to walk at a normal pace and sludging in a slow lunge forward. I want to buy a big fluffy blanket and, Linus-like, carry it with me from room to room and wrap myself in it the moment I come to a stop. I'm growing a beard to hide my face, a sort of self-created celebrity sunglasses or follically-woven burqa, to deny the universe my stunning beauty. I am currently too slow-moving to be target of its attentions.

The realisation that tonight, we go out with friends, and tomorrow, and tomorrow after that we'll creep forward at a social pace &c &c, doesn't delight me - despite all whingeing about wanting to build up our social circle here in Sydney a bit more solidly - but rather, has me in dread of getting no downtime to just be warm and quiet. Maybe I'll go for 2 out of 3, and send Nick along on at least one of the evenings' outings on his own, poor galoot.

I wheeze a semi-mighty bleah, and a feh, and a tfoo at the world. World, shut your mouth. Shut your mouth. Put your head back in the too-ample clouds spitting rain squalls at me and shut your mouth.

Gawd/ess/es/Elvis bless the Iranian people. More balls than the Yanks had in standing up to a far-right-rigged election. Stand tall.

Scraping Feets Off The Heel: Went to the substitute foot doc. Also handsome, but in a too-sculpted-muscle-and-pretty-for-me way, so Dr Joel is at no risk for loss in my medical affections. He gave me the orthotics; into the shoes they went. Things are now OK, aside from the odd suspicion that I have two small armadillos in my sneakers. And the bubble-wrap-plus-voltage sensations in my toes when I walk have stopped, so hurray. Alas, one toe has begun bugging me again - maybe some fine-tuning is due when I swoon oversee Dr Joel in a week or two for a follow-up (and hopefully remember to deliver the knock-'em-dead quip I came up with: "tell it to me straight, doc! Will I ever ... walk ... again??" ho ho, I shall slay Dr Joel, surely). Anyway, most pain gone.

Raymond Brr: Terrible terrible cold snap over NSW. Not much by oh, say, Boston winter standards - only in the celcius equivalent of the 40s and 50s fahrenheit (with frosts in mountains & the countryside) - but, given that I'm not used to it, hate cold anyway, and worst of all, Sydney homebuilders seem not to have heard of insulation ("we're the subtropics! it's never cold!") so that inside the dacha by evening it's usually every bit as chilly within as without - it's rather depressing. So our fireplace is going steady downstairs, and I am tuggling the space heater from room to room with me as required. Feh.

John God & the Choir Invisible: I have named the overall musical stuff I'm working on via GarageBand. I can't call it a "group", since I'm the only person doing it, but, you know, one-man-bands have gone on before. I have two songs done (OK, let's call them 'incredibly rough demos') and a third juuuust about ready. I am slowly getting up the nerve to even dare play them for others. Much noodling and readjusting ... I am no Brian Wilson nor George Martin; my production skills are ... minimal. I'd like the get them to an acceptably presentable state, though, naturally.

And then of course sell them and make a bamillion dollars without leaving the dacha. As one does.

Futurama: FUTURAMA IS BACK. Or will be. And not as crammed-together movies, which were nice substitutes, but aside from the second one (of four) didn't really thrill me quite as much as the old half-hour shows. God/dess/es/Elvis bless Comedy Central. I wonder, now that they're really off-leash from their old Murdochian masters, how cruel the Fox Network digs will be.

The greatest TV cartoon ever ever ever (early Peanuts animated specials aside). Yay.

And in "And Don't Tell Me I Don't Know What Tiananmen Square Was Like" news: More Foot Drama.

Finally, today, I was to see Joel The Cute-As-A-Bug-Podiatrist and get the orthotic inserts for which he'd taken casts, at the time lovingly applying soft warm plaster wraps around my feet in a manner that made me wonder if my joking of his being a foot fetishist were more on the mark than I'd intended.

After months of minor pain and limping about and generally feeling like every step of my left foot was walking on electrified bubble-wrap (the pinched nerves in my toes sending pop-pop-poppling sensations up my leg), at last to get some relief! Ahhh, finally I'd get ... errmmm, a call last night saying the doctor was sick. Could we re-schedule?

Damn.

This a.m., I call. "Oh, we're really sorry." Good start. Then: "Oh, darn; Monday's a holiday ... next Thursday he's all full ... how about the 15th of June?" Bad follow-through.

I accepted, then fumed for an hour or so. I called back, and asked if there was another doc to see, I was just picking up some inserts, &c &c. In my mind all I could see was my adorable usual foot doctor sitting alone in his office, feeling abandoned and cheated on, eyes glistening with tears over my abandonment. Still, when they said "David can see you tomorrow at noon," I snatched the appointment without hesitation. Watching a cute guy fondle my feet is one thing, ending months of ow another.

Forgive me, Joel, Cute-As-A-Bug-Podiatrist; I'd even clipped my toenails and planned to wear fresh new socks for you, you kinky bastard, you. Take heart; there'll be ... other feet. Dry your eyes; you'll forget me.

Twenty years ago, slaughter in Tiananmen Square. The bastards got away with it. We hates them forever.