It's been nearly a week

My mad cap days of constant daily blogging—sometimes up to six times a day—have largely ended it seems. It’s harder now to devote the time to do it and while the anger still drives me to carp and moan about stuff I used to blog about—such as posts about Tony Abbott and his merry crew of arsehats— then chances are it’s an in-the-moment invective spray at the situation as I encounter it and then I can’t be arsed to actually put it in print.

Anyway, that aside, since this blog is effectively my journal—save for the silver head box stuff—I have to at least plug in something from over the last week.

I got the workhouse blues
We lose two people from my work soon, victims of the budget crunch that has near-crippled Canberra—a crippling as evidenced by the contraction of job ads for the public service since the budget was announced. I’ve been through resource scarcity times before as well as times of plenty—it’s almost biblical at times!—but this is the worst I've seen it. The saddest thing is how real actual public helping work gets impacted.

I’ve been semi-lucky in the public service in that I’ve usually had one or two people I work with that I genuinely enjoy the company of. But eventually they move on and if I am lucky someone else I enjoy working with comes along.

So I totally scored big time with these guys. It’s probably been one of the best working environment (slash) small team dynamics I’ve experienced in my entire working life. And the work they've done—which I contributed to—is exceptional and they should be proud of what they did. But, alas, they fell victim to the crap and the crud of higher-level mandated staffing restrictions even though their work still needs to be done and the work they did was of high quality.

Sometimes it does just seem so unfair. I'm going to wretchedly miss them and even now the sadness of their soon-to-be-passing is somewhat overwhelming. It's rare to meet people you just click with and whose company you simply delight in being near. And now they're going. It's almost like my organisation's response to the budget crunch is Mola Ram and he just stuck his hand in my chest to pull forth my still-beating heart. 

(looks to heavens) MOLA RAAAAAAAAAAAM!

No dairy for you!
My dairy issue continues. I’ve tried A2 milk and it seems to cause less symptoms of bloating and cramping. But food is the one true love I’ve always had and I’ve always, always loved dairy. I crave it even though I can’t have it; perhaps, because I can’t have it. Ice-cream, oh God, ice-ceam. I love you and I cherish you.

I know it’s pretty pathetic for an overly fed westerner to whine about what sliver of tuck he’s no longer allowed to cram in his large gob but, well, it’s my sad party and I can kvetch if I want to. You would kvetch too if it happened to you!

The other day I was at Casso’s for a nerd night. She had takeaway for dinner, purchased from a local Turkish joint. They do these cheese straws which are essentially tubes of deep fried feta. They are, as you can imagine, the tasty shizzle. And with my sans dairy attempts that’s now a Neddy No.

I swear Casso taunted me as she ate them, savouring each tube as it deftly parted her lips, her hair thrown back and billowing as per a shampoo commercial, and joy radiating from her like the nimbus of an angel; the shameless hussy!

Scooby, Scooby-Doo!
theBoy’s love of the Scooby-Doo gang continues. When we do a Storyverse session then lately it’s almost certain the gang will be feature players. Fred lives alone, with a decoy mannequin of himself  left on his bed to fool would-be assassins. Velma and Daphne are in a committed relationship and, if they play hide and seek, they hide together and then commence indulging in semi-secret making out. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo live together in a panic room off which theBoy has his a collecting room. In there theBoy stores bones and robot parts. 

Fred likes to “solve” ridiculously easy mysterious which annoys theBoy. A typical scenario is Fred losing his toothbrush and then, when he finds it, declares the solution has been discovered; ‘I’ve solved the mystery!’ To which theBoy will wearily respond ‘Fred, that’s not a mystery.’

The other day the gang, some of who live together upstairs from their landlady Mrs Makay, had a giant tentacle burst through their floor from below and attack them. They jumped out the window onto the Mystery Machine and took off, a tentacle monster erupting out from the ground floor where Mrs Makay lives, having smashed out through the wall to chase after them. theBoy got the Mystery Machine to stop and he confronted the tentacle monster and pulled the monster’s mask off, revealing a window. Through the window could be seen Humpty and Stumpty. They’d donned a tentacle monster costume over their vehicle—a small pink coloured motorized corner store—and then scared (slash) chased after the gang because one of them did something annoying. I think Shaggy ate Stumpty’s stinky cheese collection.

Anyway as the reveal was going down theBoy decided another vehicle-sized tentacle monster attacked. He unmasked that one only to find it was Rat, also in some sort of a vehicle, and he’d attacked them because they had dissed Rat’s infusing all the food and drinks at his Ich Bin Ein Ladybird café with ladybirds. ‘They’re nutritious and delicious, delicious!’ said Rat.

Only, yep, another tentacle monster turned up. This time theBoy said it was Humpty and Stumpty’s dad. Humpty’s dad’s voice is that of a Yorkshire man-type farmer character. He was upset because theBoy had used his toothbrush. theBoy claimed it wasn’t him and that it was Bookaboo, the book obsessed rock and roll puppy dog from the TV series. So Humpty’s dad left … only for Humpty’s mum, also in a vehicle disguised as a tentacle monster, to likewise turn up to scare people, get caught and then be interrogated. She’d attacked because of the toothbrush claiming she knew it was theBoy because she’d found a pair of theBoy’s underpants left at the scene of the crime. theBoy cried he’d been framed by Bookaboo; ‘He stole my underpants and left them there. He framed me!’

Then the most enormous tentacle monster turned up, towering over the previous tentacle monster covered vehicles that had been assembled in a kind of Cthulhu-esque car park as the various occupants of the revealed vehicles were complaining about who did what to who. They all fled for their respective monstrously-depicted transports and drove off, a series of ever-larger tentacle monsters roaring off down the darkened road, their headlights—I presume beamed out of the monster’s eye-stalks—slicing the night as they fled.

Yes … the super large tentacle monster turned out to be a costume covered mobile home… a mobile home belonging to Bookaboo. After his mask was pulled off he confessed to framing theBoy. And he would have got away with it if it hadn't been for that meddling kid!

Father’s Day is coming up. theBoy couldn’t wait to tell me what he was making.

It’s an ascot, like Fred wears, only theBoy’s going to put a love heart on it.

That’s pretty awesome.  

Wikfins—A Founding Father and a wrestling vampire
Dr Benjamin Rush is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A medical doctor in a time where actual medical knowledge was still very much embryonic, he served as Surgeon General in the continental army. His wiki is a rich vein of both historical cool, weird 'they thought what?!' and the just utterly odd. He's was also the founding father of better treatment of mental illness in the new nation.

A sampling from his wiki; 

In 1803, Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to prepare for the Lewis and Clark Expedition under the tutelage of Rush, who taught Lewis about frontier illnesses and the performance of bloodletting. Rush provided the corps with a medical kit that included:

Turkish opium for nervousness
emetics to induce vomiting
medicinal wine
fifty dozen of Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills, laxatives containing more than 50% mercury, which the corps called "thunderclappers". Their meat-rich diet and lack of clean water during the expedition gave the men cause to use them frequently. Though their efficacy is questionable, their high mercury content provided an excellent tracer by which archaeologists have been able to track the corps' actual route to the Pacific.

Some time later I was cruising through the wiki for perennial candidates. A perennial candidate is someone who is one who runs for public office with a record of success that is infrequent, if existent at all. The wikfin was originally listed on this page, but the link seems to have gone, however when it was there the link led me to one Jonathon Sharkey. Sharkey is a wrestler who also indulges in consensual  vampirism in addition to threatening public figures with impaling. He was subsequently investigated by the Secret Service for making that threat in relation to George W Bush. Later he was jailed for threatening a judge and had two rifles and a wooden stake confiscated. Sharkey's wiki is simply a delight and if you need a Wikfin pick-me-up then have a look. WARNING: You could be attracted to consensual vampirism.

Well thanks journal (slash) diary. Time's gotten away from me once more and thus it is time to away ere break of night. 

Toodles!