Grizzly Air

I’m not great with flying. The vast improbability that thousands of tonnes of metal and people won’t fall out of the sky always plays on my mind. But when the alternative is eleven hours sweating it out in a jalopy on the Hume, I can suspend my disbelief. Especially for the bargain price equivalent to two tanks of fuel.

What I find less easy to resolve myself to is why budget airline seats have a recline function. This isn’t long haul, deep vein thrombosis territory – this is a morning jaunt up the east coast in time for a breakfast meeting.

No one needs to sleep. No one needs to recline. There aren’t any gold-leaf clad virgins coming to feed anyone peeled grapes.

The fact is that on a standard domestic flight I have between ten and fifteen centimetres space between my knees and the seat in front. With the seat in front reclined the space disappears. I can’t wriggle forward. I smell the Rogain on the guy in front’s bald spot. I have to suck in my gut to get the tray table down. And I’m not even particularly large. It. Is. Ridiculous.

I just can’t understand how the market research geniuses paid six figure sums to lure passengers haven’t figured out that the small factor of comfort afforded the asshole that reclines the whole flight is infinitely negated by the frustration of passengers pinned to their pleather seats like unwitting UFC warm-up acts.

Or maybe the responsibility is less on the airline and more on the individual who places their own luxury above others’ comfort. People who might well hold the door open for an elderly shopper at the department store will crush a fellow flyer on the Melbourne to Brisbane without so much as a thought. For some reason the air is sanctified space. It’s like flying is still such a novelty, such an unlikely way to casually travel, that passengers have an entitlement complex reserved for the privileged few.

Whatever people. It is time to herald change. Enough of the Me First culture of the air. For the price we’re paying there isn’t much space. We all have to manage.

Suck it up and keep it upright.

Thankyou for flying.

..........

I finally realised why I hate Napoleon Dynamite so much...

How many super-cool kids did you see wearing 'Vote For Pedro' t-shirts in the early noughties? Behind the velvet rope at every nightclub sidewalk line on a Saturday night, among every clutch of faux-hawked and bleck-tipped lads at least one deliberately-distressed tee emblazoned with the Napoleon D reference. If you listened in carefully to those trendy kids, over the course of the night you might have even picked up the odd "GOSH!" among the homophobia and expletives.

Napoleon Dynamite made nerdy cool. It crossed cultural and sub-cultural divides, and had everyone cheering for the hopelessly daggy. And along the way, while the kids were laughing and rooting for Napoleon, nerdy got appropriated by cool. It isn't bona fide nerdiness, but that doesn't seem to matter when t-shirt sales are at stake.

And I'm not ok with it. I'm very fucking un-ok with it. Nerdy isn't cool - nerdy is the antithesis of cool. The existence of nerdy defines cool. Geeky might be able to straddle the gulf of cultural improbability into cool, but nerdy is and forever will be outside of cool. Those punks in their nightclub lines have no right to nerdy. Even the vasaline-lensed, quaint and redemptive kind of nerdy that 'Vote For Pedro' symbolises.

Cool kids get everything else. They're not allowed to have nerdy too. Not on my watch.

..........

Growing old gracefully...

How many gazelles die of natural causes?

Has there ever, in the history of the wild plains of Africa, been a gangly old leaper who met its ultimate demise through old age (which apparently is something like oxidization poisoning enough cells that the whole system just gives up)?

Probably how they get their reputation as being graceful - they never get all geriatric and farty and crooked and slow.

They just get eat'n.

..........

Super Amazing Vocabulary Time!

SUPER AMAZING REAL WORD: Fecundity.
I've seen this word written and heard it used a bunch of times. Maybe at some stage I figured out what it means by the context in which it was used. I hear it now and still think of the bulkheads of tankers, or the rusty iron filings in a jar. The correct usage however would be to describe the fruitfulness of something or the high level fertility of animal or vegetable (not so much mineral).
In a sentence; "The fecundity of the Belgian countryside goes some way to redeeming the barren cultural landscape."

I-CAN'T-BELIEVE-ITS-A-REAL-WORD WORD: Ironical.
Apparently, it means EXACTLY the same thing as 'ironic'. And it sounds stupid.

NOT, IN FACT, A WORD: Alcopop.
You can't just pick two words, put them together to describe something new, and then talk about the new thing in parliament with a straight face. You just can't.

Words are cool. Tell your friends.

One HD - Best. Station. Ever.

When one is a creature of leisure (as is your good author at present), one must be careful to avoid saturation in the inane drivel of daytime television. Cliff-like cheekbones and brick jawlines can only distract anyone for so long from the stupefying abortion of the senses that is the procession of Soaps and Talk Shows.

With all due respect to Ellen (who acquits herself with wry humour and admirable understatement considering the hoards of screaming banshees populating her audience), every time I manage to extricates myself from the vortex of daytime programming, I come away at least 9% dumber. Yet somehow, just when I thought I was out (of this terrible and intellectually corrosive habit) they pull me back in.

Well, no more my friends! The merchants of hype and hysteria and celebrity decorating tips can find a new bunny to boil! For I have One HD!

Sport, sport and more glorious sport. Hours upon hours of basketball, football and surfing by which to whittle away the daytime hours. Why, just this morning I was choking back the sick welling in my throat watching Dr Phil crucify some already-beleaguered simpleton when, during a fortuitously placed commercial break, I flicked to the replay of a 2008 ASP world surfing tour event.

The joy! The sanctuary! I could marvel at the skill and camaraderie of elite athletes sunning themselves in the South of France instead of peeling myself away from revelry in the desperation of a blinkered world.

Sure, I could read a book. I could sort out my tax. But some days are consolidation days. Getting back on top of life, mentally and physically. Now on such days I have an option for mindless entertainment that won't surreptitiously leech my moral and intellectual fibre.

Thank you One HD. Thank you for the time we will spend together.

...........

Do YOU know the Muffin Man?

I don’t. Not any more. He’s dead to me.

I’m not sure when it happened, but it happened in my lifetime. The humble muffin is an endangered species.

I don’t mean the flat, yeasty, fork split panacea of English afternoons. I’m talking the deliciously portable baked treat of the wholemeal or cornmeal or branmeal with chunks of fruit and nuts and bits of foliage – has become nothing more than a glorified teacake. A bland, dry, processed sugar laden, crusty-topped teacake.

If I wanted teacake, I’d grab it from the Tasteless Shit fridge. A few strategically placed blueberries or a smear of tinned apple doesn’t magically transmogrify sugary bread into the innate awesomeness of true muffin-ness. Lipstick on a pig people, lipstick on a pig.

So, all you purveyors of baked goods. No more sneakily funneling the left over cake mix into muffin tins! The people on the street know the difference!

We’re onto it!

WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!

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Holiday. Celebrate.

I bluster and I huff and I puff and I practice my sardonic glare, and most of the time I have a handle on the world enough to have a point, I think. The world – this life – is ridiculous and arbitrary and comical and fierce, and going in with eyes open is the best buffer. And when the status quo of our immediate world is held, we can carry away to thinking awareness is a defence.
But the universe has a habit of spotting the sprig of hubris.

The universe loves to wield an axe.

I am supposed to be overseas right now, adding the final glaze of tan in the kiln of a Pacific island. It was to be a four week reward to myself for having busted my ass for ten months running a business – a business that in so many ways I loved but that killed my creative urge and netted me substantially less of a salary than I had managing a video store a few years back. It was a reward to myself for having the courage to let go of security and pursue my dream to write. I was thumbing my nose at the financial doom and gloom because I had a higher calling. I’d made enough false starts – now was the time for me to make a fist of the freelance life. The Pacific jaunt was symbolic of that resolve.

I’m fundamentally a disorganised person, but with the departure date looming I was more shambolic than usual. I had failed to make so many of the necessary preparations for an overseas trip. The big things were taken care of – I sent in my passport application with plenty of time, and got injected with a handful of arm-numbing vaccines against unspeakable diseases. But I hadn’t booked any accommodation let alone done any research on the place, didn’t have a backpack, and had nothing resembling an itinerary. I hadn’t even finalised who would look after my cat two days before I was due to leave.

I wasn’t ready for this trip. And, it slowly dawned on me, I wasn’t looking forward to this trip. Even to an island paradise, travelling on your own is hard work. It takes gumption and a certain optimistic, cavalier approach. I was feeling more anxious than cavalier. I didn’t want to go.

Then my passport didn’t come through. For no apparent reason the passport office fucked up my application and it hadn’t turned up a fortnight after it was due. I called to track it down and wasn’t given any explanation, just excuses. Sometimes it happens. There are no guarantees. The dog ate it. You can’t hurry it up. You can’t come and get it. Sorry. So despite the fact that 99% of the population get their passports within the time specified, due to powers beyond apparently anyone’s control my passport would not arrive until the week after I was due to fly out. I was their monkey of the month. Since the tickets were a bargain-basement once-ever-special deal I couldn’t change the booking or get a refund. I couldn’t go on holiday.

Relief swept over me like locusts on a wheat field. I was surprised at the release I felt. I had been pressuring myself so much to let go of my uncertain future and have fun no matter what.
I wasn’t anxious about travelling on my own overseas, but the trip had come to represent the line in the sand between my old life and new, and I wasn’t ready for that definitive break. I was – and am – terrified of the next stage of my life, the one where I grind away at a future that will probably never pay off, ending in poverty, depression and in all likelihood my own prostitution. The trip became symbolic, a initially supposed to be a celebration of the decision to move on and a reward for being brave enough to make it. Time will tell, but I know myself and the uncertainty over my future would’ve made the kava especially cheek sucking.

Of course I might have been anguishing over nothing. My future might be brighter than I could dared to have dreamed. Perhaps I would have touched down in Tonga and felt the weight of the world slip seamlessly off my shoulders, revelling in the local hospitality and the tranquil pace of island life. In hindsight the trip away might have been the best thing that could possibly happen to me.

Still, holidays shouldn’t be so hard, particularly before they even start. It does seem like poetic justice that while I was busy turning a relaxing holiday into a metaphor for the worst case scenario for my future, forces outside my control were conspiring to take the option away from me anyway.

Update: Crazy geological tectonic shenanigans in the Tongan archipelago – earthquakes triggering deep sea volcano eruptions sending fierce plumes of smoke and ash into the air, according to some reports totally blocking out direct sunlight across the whole chain of islands. I take it all back universe. Sometimes you know best…