Catching The Greyhound

Recently, I ventured forth to the Bru’s house. He’d bought a bicycle off eBay and it had come deconstructed. Being that neither he nor his boyfriend is mechanically minded he decided not to ask me to ally its greasy, alloy-framed dots because I am not mechanically minded either. So, he asked Shantoozy – she of the uncanny mathomechalogical cognisance.

These two North Melbournian loonatics live with four dogs, and have a fifth whom they are (if they can both agree that it must be done, which I doubt) offering up for a new home. This puppy is the daughter of two of their yippety-yappety brood. Some fellow supposedly bought her from them (via the internet, I think) but then wanted to pay them with part of a money order they would cash, having them pass on the rest (3,000 Euros!!!) to some mysterious third party. Fortunately, they recognised this as some kind of dodgy behaviour practised by drug-dealers, apparently, and, sensible fellows as they can occasionally be, didn’t want any part of it, least of all the part where they give their lovable puppy away to some degenerate fuckhead who’ll dump it along the freeway or take it swimming wid da fishes. Anyway, this puppy is one hell of an adorable furry bundle of mischief, and meeting her has finally swung Shantoozy over to my corner in now wanting to plonk an hound down in our hobbit-hole wif us and the two felines. (No Hefner bred ‘Bunnies’ here, unfortunately.)

Anyway, Hissy Kitty told us about G.A.P. (Greyhound Adoption Program) (Victoria) where you foster an unfortunate ex-racing/ ex-breeding greyhound until it becomes familiar enough with the human home environment, which takes about one to two months; then it can be adopted out to a permanent human family. If, however, you fall in love with it, you have the option of keeping it permanently yourself. We are just going to see how it goes and what shall most likely wind up happening is that we keep one while continuing to foster, getting our permanent pet hound a new playmate every one to two months, and that way we can keep helping this very worthy cause.

Pretty much anyone can foster a greyhound, so long as you live in Victoria; if you live elsewhere, I imagine that there is an equivalent program in your state or territory, and no doubt not just in Australia.

It should be nice to have a flesh and blood ‘Santa’s Little Helper’ about the abode (the two dimensional ones are tricky to feed and you get a really bad paper-cut type of wound if you pat them). I grew up with dogs and other pets and my folks eventually moved to a small acreage where Mum runs an hobby farm, mainly for the eggs and because she is a loony. Well, what can I say, some people like having animals around and some people don’t (and some people like Animal from ‘The Muppets’ and I do, too, but that is an utterly irrelevant point).

Groucho Marx, himself a dog-owner, said, ‘Outside of a book, a dog is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’ I’ll still have plenty of time to write and to read because the greyhound will be snoozin’ most of the time. Greyhounds are fast (indeed, the fastest land mammal on Earth!) but they are also lazy. They have an high metabolism, however, and so they don’t need to be very active. Something like half an hour’s walk-time per day is all they require, and they can sleep for up to 20 hours each day! Just like a uni. student, in that respect.

I think we should get along splendidly. The cats and the dog, too, for greyhounds are very good around other pets. (No, no ‘Penthouse’ pets around here either, unfortunately, but if you know any who also need a foster home I’ll be glad to take one or two of ‘em in, especially because I hear they breed like ‘Bunnies’.)

Let's Have Fun With Pizza!

“Are we paying for the pizza with the credit card?”

It sounds so ‘adult’ when you say things like that.

“Well, I don’t think we have any cash on us,” she replied.

I check my wallet just in case. I pull out: one almond. “That’s in there as a good-fortune charm to make sure I never go penniless; in other words, to ensure that the last thing I’d ever pull out of my wallet is an almond,” I exclaim. “I must need a new wallet.”

So, we used the credit card. Shantoozy had given the last of our cash to the dentist because Shantoozy went to the dentist today. She is a grown woman and she knew she had to go, so no-one needed to force her there, wailing and resisting. When I have to go to the dentist I know it, too, and go there even though it will hurt a bit and be boring.

I am thirty-three years old now, and for most of my life my favourite food has been pizza.

Only after I’d noticed she was finding eating her pizza quite painful on the ol’ muncher, did I latterly find out that she had actually undergone a root canal while in the dentist’s chair.

If it were me instead, she would have heard every facet of my dental ordeal in explicit detail:

“…But the eighth time Doctor Renson put the dental saw’s unforgiving interrogator to my second premolar I hearkened a slight octave shift, thus realising that the blades now carving out a higher pitch of air were rotating ever so slightly faster than previously they had. This was due, obviously, to the fact that this particular layer of the tooth was showing the beginnings of tartar-induced decay and that’s strength had been subsequently compromised. Then the sawing desisted. The dentist retracted the saw, sighing through his quavering hygienic face mask, as I…”

Well, she has the male brain in our relationship and I have the female brain, or so ‘Blog Things’ informed us when we sat their little quiz. Then again, they also told my friend, who is in an established pop-punk rock band, that he was ‘emo’ and he swears that ain’t the facts.

We kept eating the pizza. Shantoozy was down to her last slice and became concerned that I was about to commit theft when I asked her to shut her eyes, reaching as I was for her exposed vegetarian triangle.

I beseeched her not to worry, that I would not eat her final slice and, because we have constructed a strong, reliable bridge of trust between us, she relaxed and closed her eyes. I held the pizza slice above her head and told her to open her eyes as the pizza slice hove slowly into her field of vision just like the triangular Star Destroyer at the start of the original ‘Star Wars’ film, guided by my hand, and accompanied by laser-beam blasts emitted from my mouth. Half an olive was Princess Leia’s spaceship and it got sucked up to the bottom of the slice, just like in the movie, which was something else I loved as a kid, and as a kid, boy, was 'Star Wars' something else! People born later than the Nineteen-Seventies really don't know just how impressive a cultural event the original 'Star Wars' trilogy was.

Of course, at my current age one does ‘adult’ things like devote yourself to your art, and fuck regularly and soberly, and partake of the occasional metre-and-an-half long party-line of coke, and you keep your toys packeted ’cause they’re worth more that way.

Yet, I don’t really like that last one. I prefer it when toys come in a box that you can open and close, and remove from and put back into, without damaging its novel aesthetics, unlike blister-packs where you have to rip the plastic bubble off of a piece of backing-card to get at the trinket inside.

I still have the action figure collection that I built up in my childhood, and even though I now appreciate the injustice of their manufacture by kids in a sweatshop in Hong Kong, I also still have my inner child, whom I hope shall always be there despite the evil that human beings perpetuate like Darth Vader or, from Mel Brooks' 'Spaceballs', Pizza the Hutt.

Capt'n Keef

Now I have finally seen “The Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl”. I’d heard it dubbed ‘the new Indiana Jones’, but this is going too far. It lacks the wit and the imaginative thrills of the classic Indiana Jones trilogy – in all but one area, ultimately the most important: the lead character. Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow is inspired – it’s pretty high praise, I know, but I dare say Captain Jack is a better action hero even than our beloved Indy. Without Depp’s eccentric portrayal (based on Keith Richards! Good ol' Keef, the tree fella, as in, a fella who falls out of trees, like in Fiji, for example) this movie would have been merely another acceptable yet missable actioner, but this is a good and fun movie, and I’m looking forward to meeting Jack again, and that shall be real soon because Shantoozy has been hankering to see it since it came out however many months ago.

Love And Misanthropy

It’s not that I haven’t been wanting to post, I just haven’t felt that I have had anything interesting to impart. I’m really kind of a dull person, that is one whom the exciting set wouldn’t find interesting, but I don’t find them interesting either, and I generally find myself interesting, although I can also be tiresome and my brain, which causes this tiresomeness for me, and maybe it’s my heart, or soul, as well, or instead, but anyways it contributes to wearing me out.

And then there’s the difficulty in finding anybody else who isn’t dull. There are a few that I have found, true, but it’s difficult to find warmth on this crust. O, so many cold people, and solipsism ain’t the loveliest state to visit by a long shot!

Of course, this has been written while I’m in such a worn out condition as previously described. Bombarded by the searing radioactivity of this computer screen, my eyes smart like empty camel humps. I'll trundle my weary carcass off for now. Sincerely, better fortune next time, o appreciated perusers of this small-time gutter. Thanks for dropping by.

Love and misanthropy to all!