Isnt there an easier answer?

I just tried to post something on ebay and went through the several dozen minutes lodging process. Granted that it would have been easier if I had waited until the kids were asleep.

Then my Credit Card details were deemed inaccurate by ebay. Despite them being visible on my card the good programming at ebay deemed the hard copy incorrect. Since when did secure mean that you couldnt use your own card because your own card was wrong? Ebay seems to have a higher standard than everyone else. It works at the supermarket and at the petrol station and at the pharmacy and at other online stores.

Of course its good that they take security so seriously. However, even my bank accepts that the details on my card are accurate. The bank takes it a step further and even accepts the details as correct.

So I tried registering my regular bank account and debiting the amount. But that required the identification of my newly incorrect credit card which rendered the process ineffective.

So I emailed ebay customer support and suggested that something may be wrong.

Their suggestion: get another credit card and register that.

So, I'll use gumtree.

Tom

Isa Brown Chickens

We have just bought three one-week old Isa Brown chicks that we plan to grow for laying eggs.  After holding one of these fragile little things I cannot imagine how anyone who has held one could possibly put a grown one into a battery cage.

I know there is an efficiency argument for battery cages but can I say fuck off to productivity? Why should we claim productivity, or economic growth, as the overriding consideration?

Everyone who owns a battery farm should be made to spend an hour watching chicks scratch around and interact and learn all the things chicks need to do to survive. Then another hour holding one.

If they still see dollar signs on their heads then there is no saving some people.

Come to think of it, let's make all drivers spend time riding bikes in peak hour inner city traffic before they get their Probationary licence.

And perhaps we could ask every dairy farmer to have their wives forcibly impregnated, not sexually but artificially (I'm not perverted) then the offspring removed after birth and attach metal and plastic pipes to the nother's breasts for a period of time every morning and evening. If they dont reach a certain standard then maybe a hormone that is really only likely to induce mastitis could be administered.

How did I get from holding a baby chicken to that last paragraph?

Tom

Appendix to cooking show jargon

If anyone out there is planning on applying for a cooking show and doesnt really care whether they make the grade or not, could you please construct a taco. Nothing special, it can be canned taco mix or whatever.

When the pompous chef-type people ask if this is just a taco, please say the following:

This is a reconstructed taco.

Of course I did once ask a close friend, who happened to be a cinema projectionist, to splice a single frame of pornography into another film just like on Fight Club and he didnt do it. I am not one to get off my behind and do it myself but I can claim like Andy Warhol did that the dieas are important moreso than who does them.

Can I claim to be an artist now?

Tom

Next Big Thing

I was tagged to take part in The Next Big Thing by an awesome published Short Story Writer I admire. Her name is Lynette Washington. Lynette started a writer's group in Adelaide about 4 years ago and it is still going and she always leaves me amazed by her subtelty and craft. Her responses to these questions can be found here:

http://lynettewashington.wordpress.com/

Here's how it works. I received Lynette's a few months ago and I either had to join Facebook or start a blog to answer them appropriately. So I started a blog. Then, I answer ten questions about my writing then ask other great writers I know to do the same thing. My answers are as follows.

1: What is the title of your next book?

I am unsure. I am most excited about The History Erasers. But I have completed a first draft of another untitled book that I have essentially shelved and am also working on a novel I have that I dont want to name (I will call it The Other One) because if it ever gets to publication it is going under a pseudonymn. The History Erasers and The Other One are equally exciting for me to write and I cant choose which I want to complete first.

2: Where did the idea come from for the book?

The History Erasers This one has been banging around in my head for about ten years now without an outlet. It came to me when I walked past the closed shopfront of a scientific artefact store.

The Other One This one is essentially catharsis. It will be based on my career.

3: What genre does your book fall under?

Each is probably loosely literary in style and nihilistic but compassionate in tone.

4: What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The boy in The History Erasers could be played by Javier Bardem. Only because the guy can play anything.

The main character in The Other One would be played by Ed Norton because he is brilliant and is the lead actor in my favourite movie of all time - Fight Club.

5: What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

The History Erasers: A cop investigates a series of intricate and grand thefts that lead him to meet a man who will change his outlook on his ashtray.

The Other One: One worker in a health system with the insight to notice that which needs changing and is unable to change it.

6: Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Fucked if I know? Hopefully represented if someone thinks there is enough merit in it. I have thought about whether I should selfpublish if it gets knocked back by all and sundry and havent had to cross that bridge yet. I will let you know. But, if it is selfpublished, you'll know because I am definitely going to hit up everyone I know to buy a copy to maintain my sense of selfworth.

7: How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Both are presently incomplete and wonderfully so. I embrace their embryonic characters and developing plots.

8: What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

The Other One: The House of God by Samuel Shem. The most satirical exploration of a hospital system I have ever read and required reading by medicos everywhere.

The History Erasers: I am unsure. Possibly a mish mash of many things by Chuck Palahniuk.

9: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The History Erasers: Me. It captures where my head goes sometimes and then the argument I have with myself about it.

The Other One: My work. I love it everyday. And everyday I want out. And everyday I want it changed drastically. And that is an unpleasant state to be in when professional demeanour needs to be maintained.

10: What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

The History Erasers: Imagine a museum, large or small, emptied of all its artefacts in one night.

The Other One: I'll go for baseness. There's a threesome ... almost.

Below are the authors I am tagging to answer these questions next. I am not aware of any of them having blogs as far as I am aware, but if you do and wish to spread the word, please dont hesitate.

Sally Nimon: Fantasy Author. When I read her work I think Terry Pratchett and The Smartest Person in the room.

Steve Kroemer: Children's author and screen writer. There is never a quiet moment in his work.

Chris Horsman: Author of excellent stories and comics and editor whom I am sure pulls her hair out when reading my version of punctuation. The only person I know personally who has published a book.

Ken Schaefer: Author of rural stories and all round good bloke.

Tom

Poems are not my strong point

In effect, me publishing a poem is scarier than running naked through a city mall, zigzagging and starjumping.

This is called outline.

an exoskeleton on a gritty linoleum floor

shell of a life born and died in a day

punctuated by procreation

and

predatory appetite

left to lie an outline of a life lived

to be crushed into grit on a linoleum floor.

Tom

Drones

Off we go in the morning to find the paydirt. Some species may search for nectar. Others for prey. All for mates. We choose money. Off to flower we fly, mine it for cash, perhaps show others where we found it if we were unable to keep it all for ourselves and then fly back home to protect our progeny from harm. Perhaps if we have no progeny, we could manufacture some. depends on how drone-ish we are.
   
Tom

I have had enough of cooking show jargon

This year I have watched several episodes of My Kitchen Rules. It is the first time I have done it. So now I finally feel qualified to criticise it. The jargon is especially annoying to me. I have never once referred to an element in my cooking. I am assuming that there are several dozen of them in every single meal I have ever cooked. Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen to name four of the more common ones. Magnesium and Selenium to name two of the rarer. 

     Jus is not on any of the periodic tables I ever saw at school, including the one I tried to program into my graphing calculator. As far as I am aware, Pesto was never listed as one of the Lanthanides or the Actinides. Yet these people spout them as if they are chefs of the highest calibre who have earned the right to use jargon.

     If ever there was an industry that could vomit jargon like a virgin drinker on a bender it is the one in which I earn my living. Health. And at every opportunity I endeavour to use lay language. In fact, it is required. So why do wankers on television use such language as if to elevate themselves above the watching audience? Realistically most of the watching audience is watching thinking these people are amazing and even moreso for their use of hierarchical language. As with any watching audience though, the IQ, on average is less than the number of noble gases anyway so they will watch a chef prepare porridge for hours if they are told to.

     But that is not the one most annoying to me. There is one piece of terminology, that I assume has crept into the cooking lexicon long before My Kitchen Rules or MasterChef or Jamie's Kitchen or Nigella's Food Brothel (sorry, Kitchen Brothel). It is a concept really. And I am sure I am not the only person to notice this.

     The concept is that of a deconstructed whatever. The one I have seen is Deconstructed Taco.

     For something to be deconstructed, it first needs to be constructed. So, the chef (loose term) needs to construct his or her taco and then take it apart again and lay it on the plate. But that is not what they do. No, they fail to construct it at all. They make all the parts of the taco (dare I say elements of the taco?) and lay them on the plate expecting the patron, or perhaps subject, to put it together. It is laziness. Both in language and in food preparation. A taco is a taco. Apparently a plate with meat and sauce, salad, cheese and corn chips is a deconstructed taco. 

     To me, it is an unconstructed taco. More correctly, it is an unassembled taco.

     Say what you fucking mean!

     For anyone unimpressed at my pedantry, it was a vain attempt to change the tenor of the blog. With so many references to things my children have said or done I felt I was running the risk of being pigeonholed as a mummy blogger.

Tom

Disinhibition

I had been working in the garden a few days ago and came inside after I had finished. I was pretty hot and bothered and perhaps sweaty. Okay I was sweaty. As I was drinking my post-work water one of my daughters sat at the table. After exchanging pleasantries and trying to bait compliments from my progeny at my excellent effort in the front yard I suggested I should have a shower.
     And she scoffed.
     It was no simple scoff either. It was laden with disbelief as if a shower would not cut it.
     Being five she is no student of film but I got the impression that she expected that I would need to be stripped down and strafed with a highpressure hose as Rambo was.
     Or perhaps she could have been thinking that an automated carwash, sans the surrounding car, might do the trick.
     So laden with contempt was that scoff that she was probably thinking that I needed to be autoclaved like an instrument at the dentist clinic.
     Maybe even she was considering that a quick dash over to the as soon as possible to be decommissioned Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant might sterilise the odour sufficiently to allow comfortable social interaction.
     I wish I could be as disinhibited as my kids.

Tom

Very little time

One child is asleep and the other two are about to arrive home after being picked up from kindergarten and I have a few minutes to do some writing in a large body of work I have been working on for over a year now and all I can think about is the injustice of getting a flat tire on my bike thanks to a small shard of glass worming its way in over time.
     Black hands from the brake dust and road grime and high blood pressure are my punishment for trying to better myself and the world around me while some drunk neanderthal thinks it would be really funny to impress a girl my throwing a beer bottle onto the street and shattering it the night before ready for my, or someone else's, tire to run over it.
     But playing it over in my mind, I feel these two people deserve each other.
     Why? you ask.
     Well ... I would like to think that this guy being drunk as a catholic priest would be a little inaccurate with the bottle's arc and it would land closer to his foot than he planned. A shard lodges itself in his skin near an artery in his lower leg. He and she go back to his and begin drunkfumbling and then drunkfucking and this guy is on top and the glass worms it way through the arterial wall.
     Much like my bike tire really.
     And because he is pissed as a lord he thinks that the dizziness and pale colours and swimming girl beneath him are due to the impending orgasm and so goes faster causing his heart to race and spurt the bright red blood quicker into a growing and warm and and as yet unnoticed wet patch. And as he collapses slavering and quivering onto his suffocating drunken girl she has a vision of flying broken glass before she dies. And I can feel comfortable in picturing the deaths of these two because draining that gene pool is not exactly like stopping the flow of the Amazon.
     Is it wrong to imagine the deaths of imagined people just because one of them broke a bottle on the road and the other was impressed by it?
     I thought so. Now, how to work it into a story.
     Of course, the bottle could have dropped mistakenly, but isnt anywhere near so much fun.

Tom

Brillig

Went to see this fabulous band on Friday night with my partner and children. One of my older two girls was starstruck and unable to talk to one of the performers (Elizabeth).

Brillig do Cowboy songs and Sea Shanties. As they said they only played one song in which no one died, unless you count the song entitled The Devil wears Cowboy Boots.

It was very funny listening to the girls (all 5 years old and under) singing some of the songs later that week. They were all walking around the kitchen singing "I am the Hangman, I am the Hangman".

Very cool,

Tom