This is an actual dream I had last night. I kid you not.

It all started off normal, my buddies and I were going out for falafels. Actually that isnt normal. We never eat falafels, I would have to tie them down to get them to eat something that didnt have meat in there somewhere. Anyway we are in Freo and we were passing an oval  (one that I pass twice a day when I am conscious) and there is an Italian Festival on.  Some how I end up arranging some photography for the Italians (which I have also done in awake-mode on several occasions). Now there is a photo-lab nearby where I need to go print my work, and who do they give me as an assistant? Who would be the most qualified to assist me in finding the photo-lab? Al Pacino of course? I dont deny the man is multitalented, but if I only I had known at the time that we would be a useless PA.

So off we got to the lab which is now where the kebab store was earlier, we get the prints done but they were missing the black border I asked for so I have to draw the black border on the prints with a marker. While Al and I are doing this he is showing me other prints that had been done by other photographers. Showing total idiocy he gets black ink from the markers all over the other photographers prints, so its back to the lab to get those fixed. On the way back Al is killed in a drive-by so I leg it back to the mafia guys. They are then annoyed that I didnt bring their dog with them. So I then have to run back and find the dog who I have no recollection of ever having. I somehow find this dog that doesnt like me but I grab it anyway and run with it trying to bite my face all the way back.

When I get back to the italian festival there are planes dropping bombs from the sky. I take shelter in a gigantic ring made of heaps of piping. For some reason we try to push it forward to try and make it roll down the street to make a getaway.

To answer the question why about why Al Pacino would be in my dream. About a week earlier my girlfriend hired Scent of a Women. I didnt actually watch it but I saw the DVD cover on the coffee table. Apparently that was enough.

RIP Al Pacino

Well recently my Fossil watch that I had bought myself as a birthday present one year decided to be too expensive to have batteries changed so I needed something new. While watching Everybody Hates Chris (before anyone says anything…shut up) which was set in the 80s I noticed the inclusion of the Casio model and a 1980s lightbulb(probably non-energy saver, take that hippies) lit up in my head.

Back in 94 my parents bought my original calculator watch from a Chemist for $19, after I had been nagging my parents about it for weeks. I immediately hit Ebay which is the place for all your non-body organ needs. Can you believe you can pick up a brand new calculator watch online for $13?!

Now I have a calculator watch I am wondering how I got through those years from 1995 to 2009. Maybe those awkward years might not have been so awkward with the help of a calculator and a stopwatch. I was never really a big fan of wearing watches back then. It was in my “the man aint bringin me down” days where I didnt want to be a slave to time by strapping it to my wrists.

My girlfriend hated the watch from the beginning and cannot even look at me without her eyes making their way down my arms. I kept it a secret from her for weeks and I think she only barely allows it now only because the one gay guy at her work thought it was cool.

Everything is good now though, people acknowledge that by wearing a 20 year old piece of technology on my wrists that I am actually up to date with current technology. It is also hard to be socially awkward when all I have to do id type 58008. It also helps me meet my quota of boobs jokes that as I guy I am obligated to make each day. Thank you Casio!

In true transformer style we turned to nearby devices that still had power remaining. I had my laptop and I turned down the brightness on the monitor until I could hardly tell if it was even running anymore.  Those who had no gadjits stared at the fish who were no swimming in their own filth. We wondered if the power ever goes out at the power station and how they about rectifying the problem. Whether there is some room down in the basement that has a cord that has to be jiggled the right way or something more technical like a ctrl alt delete.

When we drained all the power to our phones and laptops we decided to stare at the tv for a little while longer in hope some magic will happen. It didnt.

It had been a while without something to do and Im sure all the 15-30 year olds within 3 suburbs were probably losing their minds. We needed a bit of action so we headed to the supermarket. I love being a pedestrian in a city when power goes out to traffic lights because the cars will always give way, so with enough people, peeps in cars arent going anywhere.

Even at the supermarket it was chaos. Printers were goin crazy with driver errors and more cords to be wiggled. The power cord is going to be end of our civilization as we know it. I mean yeah, it was probably the reason we developed an opposable thumb but while we are wiggling cords we are missing other important things that we could be doing. Like peanut wars.

We grabbed our choc milks and the time we got home the fish was sighing a breath of relieve that it wasnt breathing its own urine anymore. One good thing however that came from the power out is that one of the guys gfs was at the tennis and was expecting us to watch to see her in the crowd so it looks like Mr Franklin up there beyond the cracked rental ceiling had our back after all.

So it got me thinking, yeah Im not a celebrity or a sporting star but with a approximately 282 facebook friends (mostly made up of younger girls my friends went out with in high school) I realised I could use my internet presence to get things for free. People have been doing this since internet went mainstream. All the “Invite 3 of your friends and receive a free sample of our new moisturiser!” Then while your friends emails are spammed for the rest of their lives you get to enjoy a radiant glow for a few days.

So Im obviously not going to be able to live off my awesome frisbee ability like Tiger does with his golf, so I have picked out a few of my favourite items that I think it would be pretty kick ass to get. I will start with something cheap and easy until I get some advertising experience on my resume to put next to my women’s retail fashion experience from the time I was clothes shopping with my girlfriend and the shopgirl had to go to the toilet and left me in charge, or my cooking experience from when I took over a sausage sizzle run by an indian guy whilst he run off to get the reservations book for their restaurant.

Anyway Im gonna hit up Arnotts for some Milk Arrowroot biscuits (rrp $1.93 for you The Price is Right Addicts… Im looking at you mum). I practically lived off these biscuit my whole life and throw some margarine on top and not only do you have a riot on your hands but also probably the reason my growth was stunted but my energy levels were not.

Ok so here is how the message went that I sent through the Arnotts website.

Hi there
Just want to let you know that your Milk Arrowroots are practically my staple diet. I am 26 years old and put up with constant ridicule from my girlfriend because I like to cosy up with some Milk Arrowroots with a nice dab of margarine on top while she eats her crazy asian soy snacks. Anyway I have a business proposition for you Arnotts. I have a pretty active Facebook page that I am willing to dedicate to Arnotts for a week. What I ask in return is for you to send some Milk Arrowroots my way. They retail at like $1.93 right? But ask your marketing guys, can you really put a price on the kind of exposure this will get you? I have 254 facebook friends and increasing!
Anyway if you could pass my proposal onto somebody I can discuss all this with that would be great. Im sure they will think the idea is delicious hahahaha.
Thankyou

Just to show them I was serious I ticked the box to allow them to spam (or some biscuit equivalent, maybe a Savoury Shape) me.

Will keep you posted.

But even having to admit that twins existed was nothing compared to the torment further down the track. After a few weeks of sizing everybody up physically and intellectually we, as a class started our daily fitness regime with a shuttle-run. We were paired up and took to the edge of the grass to start. I had no real experience in physical activity at that point and I never stuck around to see how “The Tortoise and Hare” ended. I’m also an asthmatic which didn’t mean much because at that point I hadn’t had an attack yet so I guess I was an “Asthma Denier” .  Scientologist in the making.

Anyway I was paired up with probably the smartest most slickest guy in our class, and boy did he wear a lot of hair gel. How was I supposed to compete? Anyway needless to say I was beat pretty quickly.  I fell to my knees and shook my fist at him and vowed that he would forever be my nemesis. However he wasnt looking at the time, he just kept on running with every strand of hair firmly gelled back to make it look like he was running fast even if he wasnt even moving.

We both played basketball through high school because at that point we still around the same height. He was on a team full of super athletes while I was on the reject team full of Joshua Jacksons with a coach who was alcoholic since he missed his shot at the big league. We would get beat pretty badly. I think the first time we played them they beat us 40-2. They thought they were soo good with their non-alcoholic coach.

For the next 7 years of grade school I would compete with him. We would be the final two in all the mathematical showdowns like a couple of multiplication gun slingers, we would go to all the extra curricular classes on UFOs and other things important for 11 year olds to know. Didnt see him much through high school, mainly because I didnt do many phys-ed classes and I dont think he played hakki sack very much. We were in the same mathematics classes and he was trumping my Bs with his B+ in calculus. Then he hit the bigtime and became a school prefect. I on the other hand, was told I wasnt enough of a role model. Something about not using apostrophes…

Its now 8 years later and Im still in my lab constructing a weather machine to exact my revenge. Actually its a photolab, and instead of a weather-machine Im just getting his photos off facebook and photo-shopping genitalia onto his head. Although I dont see him often, I know he is directly responsible for everything that goes wrong in my life: from the butter going missing when I wish to apply some to some milk arrowroot biscuits, to the time a dog bit my Dunlop volley when I used to deliver pizza.

I then find out he lives in the suburb that I was aspiring to live in and that he had taken up photography. What a douche. I bumped into him at the supermarket once. Earlier that morning my friend had started drawing a comic about me. Would of been great had she not used permanent marker and marked a surface on the boss’s printing machine. So now I had to run back and forward from the supermarket with cleaning products to remove a gigantic and incriminating “NATE”. I jump into the queue with the next round of cleaners to try when I see him. He goes on about just getting back from Thailand. Douche much,

Oh man the worst bit was when Ansell condoms was having a competition for people to get one of their photos on the condom packets as an anniversary promotion. I got to work coming up with a witty concept and set it up with my professional gear and put in a lot of effort getting permissions and post production. So what happens? My arch nemesis takes a simple snap of two turtles having sex and gets on the packet!

The saddest part of all this is, that Im pretty sure he has no idea that we are even competing. He has just been living his over-acheiving life completely oblivious to the fact I have dedicated my every breath to taking him down. Curse you!!!!!!

The registrar hailed down a lady called Janet who was going to give us a run down of how it all works to promote us from “noobietard” to plain “noob”. I thought bingo was just about getting all the numbers then yelling bingo and listening to everybody else groan. Nope, there are a bunch of other games with names like “snowball” and “whingers” requiring you to form different shapes with your numbers too. So we had a team of  ladies marking our books to making it easier for us and then Janet made some remark about her being “out of it” because of her medicine and she hobbled up the stairs onto the stage.

The lady next to me said that she hopes Janet calls them slow tonight. “Slower than what?” I thought. “Great” I thought I was going to be stuck in this poorly ventilated room all night listening to the sounds of old people eating dried fruits. Janet welcomed everybody and they got the usual corn of the raffles out the way. Janet then went through the rules, something like “no clawing or fish-hooking” I think.

I like bingo, mice and television

Finally it was time for the luck-fest. “2 and 3.. 23″ I found it quick and went to look around at all the old folks struggling with their bingo cards but before I could put on my smug Gen Y “fit a billion songs onto my ipod” smile Janet was already calling another number and another. “Jesus I think Janet is reacting to her meds!” Everyone seemed fine and were zipping through their bingo cards at speeds beyond what their arthritis medication would allow. I stored a few numbers away in my head and managed to catch up mostly because I figured out the vertical numbering system on the cards which the lady next to me “forgot” to mention.

A few thing would repeatedly throw off my number search throughout the night.

1. Janet’s accent whenever she says bingo
2. the whistling whenever 11 is called (legs 11)
3. the excitement whenever I think I have slight chance of winning because I’m thinking “If I win…and I call out bingo for the whole room to hear.. what if my voice cracks for a sec like an adolescent which I am still susceptible to.

At one point I thought I had a bingo (in the whingers game, laugh if you want just like my girlfriend did) but upon close inspection realised that I did not. Suspense.Drama. “Never mind” I called back. Janet then gave me a disapproving look like my 2nd grade teacher (2 years before being awesome at speed and accuracy). I look over at my girlfriend, she is having a ball. A month ago she proclaimed she was a maths genius when she was a kid but I think that’s a load of bull. A lady a few seats down goes through her bag and pulls out a bright orange dauber for me, I thought I was doing perfectly ok but according to her +3 vision adjusting reading glasses I was not.

I didnt win a cent that night and including the bingo books, daubers and a bottle of water I was down about $70. My girlfriend however won $50 dollars in the very last round. I asked her if she was going to spend her money and she said she was going to keep it in her journal as a souvenir. I could have buried her in a shallow grave right there outside of that church.

As I walk down the mall passing an eclectic mix of stores, from tattoo parlours to French literature I see a man in his 70s smoking a cigarette by himself. I enter Gerry’s and in the reflection in the mirrow I see the smoking man flick away his half finished cigarette. Rather than start with the cheery “How can I help you?” that I usually get at the speed-orientated hairdressers, he walks right past me with no acknowledgment and removes the towel from the nearest seats. “Have a seat”. Straight down to business. It’s a barbershop – we both know what we are there for.

When I’m not getting my hair cut I work in a photolab. A few days earlier I had printed a roll of film handed in by a group of people notorious for causing disturbances in the mall that barber is located in. I asked the barber about them and we agreed that there wasn’t anything that he, I nor the police could do. Unless of course the three of us try to make the area even more unaffordable by adding some more coffeeshops until the vagrants get pushed further and further away from things.

I look up for a moment and see a through a strategically placed set of mirrors… the bald spot forming on my head. I imagine any modern hairdressers would have these removed to appease the vanity of modern men such as myself.

For the rest of our ‘one on one’ session I treat my baldspot like an eclipse and I stare straight ahead like Im on a Bryll cream rollercoaster. On stage right the barber kept his products. They each were in their own compact little containers,  a lot different to the supersized products we are all used to now where they somehow manage to squeeze an extra 25% into them. Times were good before we had to jumbosize everything.

Gerry started rubbing something on my neck. I thought it was a traditional way of finishing up a haircut. This is where I get uneasy. Im going to let you on in a little secret. I have a little bit of hair on the top of my neck/back. A little bit of scruff, and when I go to the conveyor belt hairdressers they only clip what they cab see without moving any textile. They do a little look of contemplation, then a “meh” kind of look and move on. Gerry on the other hand assessed the situation like Michelangelo standing before the Sistine Chapel licking his finger and measuring the wind in the room. He leans past me and opens up a cylinder, in it was a straight edged blade. It sounded like a sword being drawn from its scabbard, I see my reflection in it as it passes my face. Gerry takes one more step back to compose himself.

When I was 16 I told my father I would marry into the mafia, but right not I have an old italian man with a blade to my throat and I am literally terrified. I started looking back at my ties with the italian community over the years. Ciao Italia in South Perth, photographing the Italian Club dances, dating and breaking up with my old boss’s daughter… hang on.. what if Domenic has put a hit out on me! What better opportunity to “make me disappear” than at the barber where its perfectly acceptable to hold a blade to someones throat! All italian guys catch up and talk over espresso, Domenic could have asked a special favour of Gerry in his nice quiet barbershop! I bet if I go behind the counter there will be a photo of me there, no wonder Gerry was so quick to get rid his cigarette earlier,  payday had just walked in the door! I was just about to blurt “IT WAS 4 YEARS AGO!” when Gerry cut me off. Not with the blade but with his gruff two word sentences that are a product of 50 years of customer service. “All done” he says.

I slide my sweaty behind off that leather seat squeaking like a couch in summer. I pay for my haircut and while he sweeps up I take a few photos. “Its been a long time since someone has taken photos of the chairs” he says. He then says he needs to hurry to catch the bus. I imagine him sitting there at the bus stop surrounded by teenagers with his blade in the pocket ready to deal italian justice… or maybe just proper grooming.

Jokes aside Gerry gives good haircuts. Check it out in the Westgate Mall in Fremantle. It beats sitting there listening to squawky hairdressers talk about how messy their partners are.

Gerrys Barbershop

Before my girlfriend and I go to work we have the news on and on this particular day there was a story of a boy who got ill from drinking to much Red Bull. 8 cans in a day I think. I then went on about how 8 cans of anything in a day is probably bad for you. I then paused and said “except water”. My girlfriend then jumped on her high and mighty pharmacist horse and said that even water is not good in that amount. I then said I would prove to her it is fine by drinking 8 litres of water that day. A bet for dinner ensued.
We have water on tap at work so I thought to myself “this is going to be easy” I crunched the numbers and come up with drinking a plastic cup of water every 10 minutes of my working day. Im still thinking it is possible, even at this point.
Sometimes you think you are so right that you tell yourself “I am so right I am not going to even bother googling this to be sure, because I am so sure I am right”.
I get to work and start off strong, 10 cups in the first hour. Not even sick of the taste yet.
3 cups later I hit the wall. I felt a bit gooey. I went to the toilet but to no avail. I had clocked up over 2.5L at that point so I was only just over a third of the way there and a third of the way timewise. But I felt like I couldnt drink another drop. I told myself I would wait til after lunch. Even after a plate of shepherds pie I much rathered a millkshake as a preferred beverage, even with my dignity at stake. It was later in the afternoon and after not having drank another cup I spoke to one of my friends. He informed me of possible brain hemorrhaging. I was thrown back a little. I turned to google and found this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

“Nearly all deaths related to water intoxication in normal individuals have resulted either from water drinking contests, in which individuals attempt to consume high amounts of water”
Well thank you wikipedia.

So where would you like to go for dinner?

Something like this

Gripping Stuff

The population of Perth has officially begun facing an activity shift on Sunday mornings. What once was a bipolar time of either church or sleeping off hangovers now sees church go-ers leave their good clothes on their hangers and boozehounds waking up early. As atoning as it is singing for redemption in church amongst your fellow man or staying wrapped in your sheets with the blinds closed beyond 11 in the morning, people are now finding the moral midpoint at flea markets.
I usually get to the markets about 10am and it is already packed of sellers and buyers. Plenty of indi/bohemians/hippy types, new couples keeping things interesting, couples newly living together looking for something interesting and full nuclear families looking for something to keep their kids interested.
Keep in mind that these markets dont have much of an internet presence, they do however have a location right next to one of Perth’s busiest roads which is enough to make drivers to pull over to have a look or at the least tell themselves they will have a look next weekend.
Being a camera ethusiast, my reason for being amongst the hagglers is trying to find an old valuable camera hopefully without the current owner realising that what they have is actually valuable and then to calmly purchase it from them. After that it is then fine, double time it out of there. This is not to say that I havent overpaid for something. I once paid $4 for a Kodak Disc camera. Just a few months ago, so…. 10 years after the camera stopped being useful and 27 years after it stopped being cool. But obviously the bearded gentlemen needed the $4 and I could do my bit and hide the camera in a big hole so some former Kodak employee can rest easy tonight. As my dinner is almost ready and I gotta cut this short Im going into bullet point mode.
Here is a list of my favourite things about flea markets.
1) Seeing people trying to maintain dignity as they haggle
2) Seeing parents trying to get to their kids before they touch anything too dirty after they have lost sight of them
3)Seeing the kids get excited about an item they couldnt possibly need (like a rake?) and how upset they get when they parents say no
4)The coin donation box that makes the coin sipiral down before a disappointing ending
5)Some of the items that people genuinely expect to sell. ie used underpants
6)Car Bonnet + Blanket = Shopfront