Our bags are packed
We’re almost ready to go

Yep, just time for a short sharp burst of Toxic Custard before we jet off to the USA. This could be the last TCWF in a few weeks; or I might get time to fire off a quick one during the month’s holiday. I don’t know. Time will tell.

What does this mean for me? No work for a month! Woo hoo! No thumping my computer when it makes that irritating whining noise. No having to remind my excessively hard-working colleagues that it’s lunchtime. No dodging the chaotic St Kilda Road traffic.

Speaking of which… you know the Melbourne Concert Hall?… (just sit there nodding at your terminals if you don’t - it’s really of no consequence if you do or not)… You know those traffic lights in St Kilda Road opposite the Concert Hall?… You know how when they go red that you’re meant to stop?…

The driver of red Commodore NJM887 doesn’t know this, apparently, and demonstrated this misunderstanding of the red traffic light on Friday around 1pm, and has therefore earned this week’s MORON OF THE WEEK.

About a month ago the local council finally replaced our horrible grotty looking bottle and can recycle bags with nice new small bins. They came with a notice explaining what to put in them, and when to leave them out. Great - though most of our neighbours apparently haven’t got the energy to figure it out. ("What, you mean the bottles go in there?")

Anyway, last week another bin arrived, a wheely bin similar to our regular rubbish bins, but with a distinctive red lid, and a notice saying "recyclable material only". Cool, it must be a paper recycling bin! That’ll get around the problem of only monthly paper collections. (I mean… monthly? Who’s got the space to store a month’s worth of paper? It fills half the spare room! No wonder the paper recyclers want more paper!)

But no notice saying precisely which recyclable material the bin would eat was with it. An inquiry to the council revealed it was ANOTHER bottle and can bin! Oh, great! Two separate bins for bottles and cans, none for paper! Another example of government efficiency. Just what we need guys, well done.

I see the Sex Pistols are getting back together for another tour. I also caught something on the news about Prince Charles drumming. Or was that the same story? Is Charles joining the Sex Pistols?

(Imagine Charles’ cultured royal voice…)
"We are an anti-Christ,
We are an anarchist,
Don’t know what one wants, but one knows where to get it,
We want to destroy passers-by…"

Our neighbour lost his electricity tonight. This shouldn’t have been totally unexpected - he had asked to get the account switched over to him after his flatmate moved out on the weekend, so it was only natural that they should cut the power off instead.

So he rang them up, and after several millennia on hold waiting for a human to respond got an apparently quite grumpy operator who seemed to think it a bit of an imposition to ask to have the power switched back on.

She asked if the mains switch was on. Like he wouldn’t notice if he had decided to turn it off. Maybe she thought he sleepwalks? Or that little green leprachauns drunk after St Patricks Day had turned it off? "Because, you know if we send out a truck and it turns out the switch was off, we’ll bill you $130."

Oh, nice. "There’s no chance you didn’t just disconnect it by mistake?"

"None."

"Okay lady, send the truck. Send all the trucks you want. Send the whole damn fleet, just get my power back on, okay? Get my power back on before the meat spoils and I personally bring it to your office and ram it up your nose."

(You know I’m just making this up, don’t you? Poetic license, you know. 007, licensed to exaggerate.)

So, the truck comes, with Mr Straightforward Eric Honesty in the cab. "Looks like you got cut-off! Just reconnect it here, and… presto." And there was light.

Nice to know privatisation is bringing us better service.

Finding your favourite radio station is just a matter of working out which one has the most of the same "best of" albums as you. We’ve found ours, it appears to be GOLD-FM.

Problem is, they keep playing the same damn songs. I’d swear they had a bunch of tapes, each with a different half-hour of songs, and they play each tape once every few days. That’s why you’ll hear Boomtown Rats’ "Don’t Like Mondays" twice in one weekend. And why Billy Joel’s "Only The Good Die Young" seems to pop up so often. And just don’t talk to me about Dragon’s "Are You Old Enough".

Still, just finding the station is a major task on our older, slightly defective stereo - the FM dial is out of whack, so you have to turn a little to the right of the advertised frequency. You can tell the stereo is old because it’s silver, not black. And most of the case is made of wood. That’s how old we’re talking. I’m telling you, it’s so old it doesn’t have a ‘CD’ input, just an ‘AUX’.

Less than three weeks now until we set out on holiday to visit relatives a.k.a. the Toxic Custard Tour Of America. Well, actually it’s two weeks boiling in Phoenix, and two weeks getting wet in Seattle. With a bunch of hours hanging around LAX changing planes.

Well, the Grand Prix was pretty impressive. Especially that crash in the first lap.

The advertising puzzles me. Billboard cigarette advertising’s been banned for years in this state. But the rule appears to be "if it’s the Grand Prix, it’s okay." Hmmm. At least the government warning has to be proportionally increased with the size of the ad, so you’ve got a huge, 90,000 point font saying "SMOKING KILLS" next to it.

The pitstops visits were very fast, of course. Ten or fifteen seconds to refuel and change the tyres. So why is it that mechanics always take so long to repair cars? If they really tried hard, they could be finished in a matter of seconds.

We all have had strange beliefs about how the world works. When I was a kid, I naturally used to dread the unwanted fart. Especially at school, while in class. But inevitably it would squeeze its way out. So I hit upon a plan to prevent the people around me from getting the whiff. Easy. Logical. Couldn’t fail. I’d breathe it all in myself. Of course! If I got all the smelly bits, nobody else could smell it, could they! Brilliant!