An open letter to the neighbourhood racist

Dear Fuckstick,

Last night, you chose to wake up the neighbourhood by racially abusing the taxi driver who brought you home, pissed out of your brain, at 3 o'clock in the morning. As enjoyable as you seem to find the exercise, I don't appreciate (nor does the rest of the street) being woken up by redneck cockheads like you.

Though you certainly have a way with words and a persuasive turn of phrase: "why don't you learn fucken English!? Have some fucken respect for this country mate! I don't wanna go to your fucken country! Have some fucken respect" etc, I would be more impressed if this wasn't the second time in a month that exactly the same thing has happened.

Last time, you took the particularly charming tack of calling the taxi driver a "curry muncher" and by thoughtfully informing him that it was people like him who gave "his people" a "bad name".

I congratulate you for your bravery - picking on taxi drivers unable to fight back as they are technically "at work", selecting those with a poor grasp of English, waiting until you get home before sparking up and then running into your house after they have already delivered you for a minimal fee. I applaud your eloquence: "why don't you fuck off back to your own country" and I am glad, so very glad that it is people like you who many new immigrants get to encounter at least every now and then.

Here's a news flash for you Fucktard, abusing someone for "not having respect for this country" and in the very same breath telling them that you don't want to go to their "fucken country" is so disastrously ironic that it actually leaves me speechless.

You, my friend, neighbour, brother in citizenship, I despise. I wish nothing for you but misery and a long, unfulfilling life.

Oh and while you're at it, fuck off out of our street.

Yrs etc.

Tom.

Amusement (en francais)

I'm going over the Seas soon. OH THE EXCITEMENT!!

One of the places I'll be traipsing though is Paris. That's right. Paris.

In doing the obligatory pre-trip planning, I discovered that one the airports in Paris is called...Orly.




Ha!

Neeeaaooowww!

I'm not all that in to fast cars and the like, but this is ace.

The looming Arc de Triomphe is amazing.

Well-earned

David Attenborough is finally retiring at 83.

What a wonderful man and and a wonderful life he has led. Nature documentaries will not be the same without his distinctive narration.


I guess it had to happen one day.

PS - What's happened to Ausculture?

OH NOES!!!11!!!!11

I like nature. I do. I like it's little twigs and it's sprouty grass, it's wavy trees and blowing winds it's droughts and flooding rains. I have been known to spend "time" outside - some may even have seen me frolicking happily in the "woods".

But every now and then it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Gather 'round children and let me tell you a story, a story of innocentsce lost, of heart-wrenching despair and all round WTF-ness.

OH MY GOD TOM, I AM TOTALLY GOING TO FREAK OUT RIGHT NOW!

It's OK, it's not THAT scary a story. Like, chill out dudes.

It all began "back in the day" when Snooze and I moved into our frankly "righteous" pad in inner-city Melbourne town. Oh they were happy days. A commonly agreed "feature of awesome-ness" in this new abode is an outdoor area I like to call the "backyard", complete with pondage.

For some months*, we assumed said pondage was just a stagnant cesspool of ancient waters, so you will appreciate our shock when we discovered, quite by accident, that these pools were in fact INHABITED!

Dude.

After recovering from our collective shock we investigated further. A litter of goldfish, their bodies adapted to the lightless conditions and foodless depths, had been swimming their merry way in front of our very noses for weeks** and we had noticed nary a thing. Yet here they were, splishing in a carefree manner and generally living up a storm (insomuch as they were alive).

With mouths agape, we set to improving their conditions (I would consequently recommend NOT cleaning a filthy pond with your mouth open, but there you go). We scooped our new little friends from the bowels of the swamp and placed them in the washing basin, drained the ponds, scrubbed them, hosed them, and re-filled them with sparkling clear water fit for an item and then introduced our fishes back to their new home.

Oh how they gallavanted!

Among other things, our earlier exploratory work had unearthed a pump system designed to circulate the water from one pond to the other, giving the fish a chance to gambol in the running stream and generally benefit from the tasty goodness. With a stroke of genius, we decided to let the pump run as we left the house one night to give the fishes a good run.

You can imagine our horror then, when we returned the following day to discover the pond COMPLETELY EMPTY bar the smallest, most distressing PUDDLE OF HELL I have ever witnessed. In it struggled five or six terrified goldfish, gasping for, well, water I guess.

Amazingly, after we rescued them and put them back into the washing basin as we refilled the ponds, they were all fine - not a formal complaint from any of them.

We did this again (shut up - it was BY ACCIDENT) a couple of weeks later, but the plucky little tackers just bounced right back.

Over time we have learned to love our fishes and despite our track record of trying to kill them (BY ACCIDENT), I like to think they felt a certain affection for us too that had nothing to do with food.

And this is where I get back to nature (not literally, I'm not into that sort of thing).

For those who live, like, on the PLANET, you will know that we are in the grips of a drought the likes of which we have never seen since the last one! The lack of water has made our dams dry, our grass parched, our trees wilted and our right-wing fuckwit columnists hysterical. Strange things happen in a drought.

And so it was, that a few short weeks ago, as I waltzed (literally) around my house on a leisurely weekend, I happened to cast an eye out into our backyard and there saw an amazing sight.

Standing on the pond, it's graceful neck swaying to and fro, impossibly long, spindly legs and an elegantly tapered beak scything the air, was a herron. A large waterfowl of the wetland variety. And there it was, standing in our tiny inner-city backyard.

With barely concealed excitement I ran to find my camera to record this wonderous moment. Returning to the backyard, camera at the ready, there was the herron, gulping gently. I took a photo. The herron gulped some more. I took another. The herron eyed me with its beady eye.

But then a little nagging voice started in my head.

Why is there a herron in our backyard? (Isn't it pretty!) No, wait a minute, WHY IS THERE A HERRON IN OUR BACKYARD AND WHY IS IT GULPING LIKE THAT!!??

OH NOES!!!1!!!!11!!


That's right readers. The fucken herron ATE OUR FISH. Not only did it eat our fish, it ate ALL BUT ONE!! There was one, solitary, quivering nervous wreck of a goldfish left.


So beware! Just because it looks pretty, doesn't mean it WON'T EAT YOU (or at least your fish). Nature's a bitch man. Or should that be nature's a bitch, man? Whatever. JUST DON'T LET YOUR GUARD DOWN WHEN NATURE'S AROUND. For real.


The use of "talking marks" in this "post" brought to you by Mike's Dad.

* and by months I do of course mean days
** and by weeks I of course mean multiple hours

C'mon (et al)

When I was a smaller person, we used to have summer holdiays at Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula. The house was (and still is) an old weatherboard beach shack that belongs to the extended family. They were wonderful holidays, seemingly eternal weeks of sun, swimming and beach. Fish 'n' chips, pizza, cordial with ice in it. No TV, lots of boardgames, cricket (endless cricket), tennis, bikes - just ace.

While all that stuff was blissful, nothing was quite as exciting as getting taken by Dad to the brand new tennis centre to see the Australian Open. Looking back, it was an ideal opportunity to give my Mum a break - can you imagine the luxury of no kids for a whole day when usually there were at least three and often several more.

We would get in the van and drive to Frankston, get on the train and sit impatiently all the way to (then) Flinders Park, a white, glistening, almost religious icon in the centre of the city. Tickets to the outside courts in the first week was standard - hundreds of games, the soft thock of tennis balls filling the air. Occasionally we'd see someone famous, Stephan Edberg, Pat Cash, Stefi Graff - but mostly we watched lowly ranked qualifiers and doubles on the back courts.


One year Dad got a rush of blood to the head and bought us tickets to Centre Court. I have no idea who we saw, it doesn't matter in the slightest, all I remember was the stunning stadium. Modern, compact, shiny, colourful and so astonishingly quiet, any sound dense, like talking into a pillow.


I've been to the tennis most years since then but I've missed the last few Opens. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to see the best in the world doing their "thang". So it was with some anticipation that me and Pete went along last Wednesday to see the night session of the Men's quarter finals - Rafael Nadal versus Fernando Gonzalez.

Anyone with even a passing interest in the tennis will know that the highly favoured Nadal was summarily dispatched by an extraordinary Gonzalez on the night. He was truly amazing with a forehand that really shouldn't be legal it's that good. We got tickets courtesy of a friend with inside contacts right next to Gonzalez' players box, three rows from the front. We could pretty much smell the players they were that close.

We saw the little interchanges Gonzalez had with his coach, watched Nadal struggle to find a chink in his armour and watched the best tennis that certainly I've ever seen.

Rafael Nadal adjusting his famous wedgie - Yes, I actually got a photo of it!

In a couple of hours Gonzalez will take to Centre Court to play in his first ever Grand Slam final against Roger Federer, possibly the greatest tennis player that has ever played the game. Both won their semis with terrifying efficiency, but no-one expects Gonzalez to even come close to Federer - in the words of Dr Evil, "no Mr Bond, I expect you to die". But having watched him on Wednesday and after seeing what he did to poor Tommy Haas, I reckon he's in with a chance.

So tonight I shall be sitting back and enjoying what could be one of the best games of tennis played in recent years. And I wouldn't be surprised if Gonzalez can do something quite extraordinary. I really hope he does.

Having said all that, I can now forsee and absolute thrashing being dealt out by Federer, but in the meantime, get behind Gonzalez - if nothing else, he's much cuter and considerably more charming.

Go Fernando!!

At last!

It makes my heart swell with pride when friends of mine do extraordinary things. Sophie is not only an author of some note, but has recently turned her hand to nature photography with quite stunning results. I've been pestering her to post this for some time and now she has.

So I insist you visit her site immediately, grab a comfy chair, settle back and marvel at her spectacular footage of the truly magnificent sea eagle.