House Inspection

SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING - SPOILER WARNING

Please do not read this post unless you have seen the new James Bond film Skyfall.

Tom: It wasn't like this before.

Deborah: Definitely not like this before.

Tom: Oh, here's the agent.

Mr Forster: Tom, Deborah! Great to see you! Welcome to your new home.

Deborah: Yes...

Tom: ...about that...

Mr Forster: I've got the keys right here for the final inspection and handover.

Tom: I'm not sure you'll need those.

Mr Forster: Ahhh... I see the cleaners have been through. Must've forgotten to lock the front door.

Deborah: The front door's in the front yard.

Tom: On fire.

Mr Forster: And doesn't that oak burn well? Quality hardwood there.

Deborah: And the Aston Martin?

Mr Forster: I'm sorry?

Deborah: The Aston Martin. Strafed with bullets.

Mr Forster: A classic British car.

Tom: Also on fire.

Mr Forster: It's post-modern artwork. Possibly a Banksy.

Deborah: It just seems there's a few differences since we first inspected.

Mr Forster: Nothing unusual, just a customary going-over by the departing family.

Tom: I thought the owner was dead?

Mr Forster: Yes, yes, that's what we understand, terrible thing. Not sure what he did. Something for the government. Inherited the estate from his parents, but hasn't been here for years.

Deborah: Are you sure?

Mr Forster: Why?

Deborah: It just seems there's a few things missing.

Mr Forster: Like what?

Deborah: Like the roof.

Mr Forster: Ohhh... no, no, that's just a trick of the light. It's these Scottish glens, you know, all misty. Let's head inside. Just mind the smoke... that is, the mist.

Tom: It's awfully drafty.

Mr Forster: It is well ventilated for such an old manor house, isn't it?

Deborah: There's a lot of nails on the floor.

Mr Forster: Perfect for DIY fixups.

Tom: And these bodies, stacked like cordwood over here?

Mr Forster: Poachers.

Tom: Right.

Mr Forster: Let's head into the drawing room. Just mind the blood.

Deborah: Now see, this is new.

Mr Forster: What's that?

Deborah: The helicopter.

Tom: I don't remember that before either.

Mr Forster: It's not a new feature, it's just been cleaned and restored.

Deborah: It's a smouldering wreck.

Mr Forster: So what you're saying is that it's not "Apache" on what you thought you were buying?

...

...

Mr Forster: I'll cancel the deposit.

Remember November: Cane Toads

It was less than a second after I spotted the cane toad that I realised I was about to watch it die.

It was just last night. I had pulled up at the Albion five-ways, waiting for a light to go green, allowing me to make a right hook turn.

Then I noticed something small flop on the bitumen about 10 metres in front of my car.

The toad was halfway across the opposite side of the road, jumping limply towards the median strip. Goodness knows how it had even got that far alive. Cane toads are not the fastest of movers, and this one seemed particularly sluggish.

A red car zoomed towards the toad, but missed it by a few centimetres.

The toad flopped itself forward again, enough to be directly underneath the body of a silver car that just then whizzed over it.

By now I was watching with a tightness in my throat, the sense of inevitability almost oppressive, despite only three or four seconds having passed.

The toad made a final leap towards the strip. It was about a metre away, but it may as well have been a  different planet. The toad was doomed.

A white van tore down the slight decline at the other end of the fiveways, and within a second was upon the toad.

Its front wheel perfectly aligned with the cane toad, and with a crunch, and a sharp flip onto its back, the toad was dead. The van carried on.

I let out a breath I didn't realise I'd been holding. Then, with a gape in the traffic and my light green, I made my right turn.

The toad was belly up, pale in the light of the street lamps. I steered my Yaris around the corpse and left it in the rear view.

Not the actual cane toad. This cane toad is an actor,
taking part in a re-enactment.

I'm not sure why I felt for the cane toad. They're horrible things, an introduced pest that's caused untold damage to the state's biodiversity. I've run over my fair share during the height of summer, when they swarm across roads in suburban areas. The popping sound as tyres roll over them would be familiar to most Queenslanders.

Indeed, most Queenslanders would gleefully admit to having the blood of dozens of cane toads on their hands - or more likely, on an old cricket bat or golf club.

We weren't big golfers in my family, but still we had an old bronze-coloured nine-iron, kept specifically for use smashing toads from the edges of our property back into the scrub bush from whence they had come.

I seem to have a fuzzy memory of someone in the neighbourhood putting a bunch of toads in an empty petrol can, then setting them on fire. Crackle, crackle.

Nowadays, such relish in destruction is frowned upon - the sanctioned disposal method is placing collected cane toads in a plastic bag, then placing said bag in the freezer. It's the most humane way - although forgive me if I've never been very keen on having toad eyes stare at me when I reach into the freezer to retrieve some chicken nuggets.

But for a moment, I felt for that cane toad, or at least, I felt the responsibility of bearing witness to the extinction of a life.

I got over it within seconds. It was, after all, a cane toad.

What creative methods of death have you seen visited upon the cane toad?

James Bond Does Not Drink Beer

My friends, I write to you distressed, distraught and dismayed by a revelation that I cannot believe I had not heard until now.

Heineken has spent a reported $45 million dollars to sponsor the latest James Bond film, Skyfall.

James Bond. Drinking beer.

Beer. 

The utter blasphemy of this decision should be obvious to anyone who's ever flicked on the teev and found themselves watching Goldfinger for the seventeenth time, because the bit with the ejector seat and the bit with the laser and Oddjob and Pussy Galore are so. freaking. cool.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against beer. Many people I respect and admire drink beer. 

But James Bond does not drink beer.

James Bond drinks vodka martinis. Occasionally he drinks a mint julep, or Bollinger or Dom Perignon champagne. Sometimes port or sherry.

But never, ever, EVER beer.

James Bond does not pop to the off-licence for a six-pack. James Bond does not crack open a tallie on return from a hard day's work shooting bad guys on Her Majesty's pleasure. James Bond does not pick up a slab ahead of an evening's baccarat.

Now you may think I'm over-reacting. Fine. Here's an experiment. 

Imagine James Bond eating a hotdog.

Go on, imagine it. Picture, in your mind, the suave secret agent, sidling up to a mobile van on a street corner, while on stake out. See 007 hand over a fiver in return for a soft bun and a lukewarm pink tube of almost-meat; watch as he squeezes first ketchup, then mustard over his late-night snack. Conjure up the image of Britain's sharpest spy shoving sugary bread into his mouth, fluffy specks breaking off on the corners of his lips and fluttering down to land the lapels of his Italian tuxedo, followed by a plop of errant mustard, leaving a yellow stain across his previously crisp white shirt. Imagine Bond chewing on rubbery sausage, he face contorting around the foodstuff, twisting and gobbing until the last of the desperately sad hotdog hits the back of his tonsils and he burps, quietly at first, then louder, the taste of over-cooked sausage returning for one final visit, like the Blofeld of processed meats.

YOU CAN'T IMAGINE IT WITHOUT BREAKING YOUR HEAD BECAUSE JAMES BOND DOES NOT EAT HOTDOGS SO NOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I'M MAD BECAUSE JAMES BOND DOES NOT DRINK BEER.

Here is my visual response:

I guess what I'm saying here is that JAMES BOND DOES NOT DRINK BEER.

Trishaw

A mooring stop in Magwe, along Burma's great Irrawaddy River, brought with it my first encounter with a trishaw.

The trishaw is a rickshaw crossed with a sidecar. A seat of sorts is mounted on a third wheel that sits out from the right side of the bicycle. A small metal crossbeam allows your foot purchase from whence to lever  into the wooden seat. It's generally padded with a cushion, but if you're well-padded yourself, you might find your rear end squeezed a tad. That's nothing compared to the driver/rider/torture victim, whose job it is to press themselves into the slim gap between sidecar and bike proper, and sink down onto the right peddle in the vain hope his tiny frame can start the thing moving.

You sit, oddly next to your driver, the road in full view in front of you, his legs madly thrusting up and down to attain a speed of 6 to 10 kilometres per hour. Gravity is both a sweet friend and a bitter enemy. Even a small rise in the road will force the rider to dismount and push the trishaw forward. But once over the crest - yippee!

My Gran. She is very, very British.

It's the local transportation mode of choice, perfect for Burma's narrow roads, even putting trams and buses out of business in some quarters. But the country's increasing partiality to Western tourists could have an effect on the popularity of trishaw driving as a job.  The fat dollars may not be adequate recompense for the fat asses.

And I include my own ass in that.

As pleasantly colonial as riding the trishaw was, I felt heart-wrenchingly awful doing it. The poor bloke giving the job of hauling me around was skinnier than a bulimic on laxatives, and, in this devoutly Buddhist nation, must have done something terrible in a past life to be reincarnated as my beast of burden.

I said as much to Myu, the boat's purser, after I'd clambered down and made my way once more for the RV Orient Pandaw. "I felt so sorry for him, having to drag me around," I laughed, making the "Wide Load" gesture about my person.

"Ah, yes, because you are so fat!" he laughed back.

Well, yes, Myu, that was the reason, but you didn't have to go and agree. Where I come from, it's customary for people to feed me sweet lies about how no, I'm not actually fat.  But I looked around, and realised that yes, I've got at least 20 kilograms on the average local, so Myu was being technically correct. The most heart-breaking kind of correct.

Having said that, I did have another five or six locals point at me and utter the word "Beautiful" during my trishaw journey, so unless they wanted me to burst into a Christina Aguilera number, I must have still been a bit exotic 'round those parts.

Or maybe they were just complimenting the trishaw driver on his hauling power.

Sunset over the Irrawaddy River at Magwe.

Remember November: Don't Do Stuff

I'm heading to mega geek-fest Supanova this weekend, on assignment for Brisbane Times.

I *may* be going dressed as She-Ra, Princess of Power. You know, for work.

Anyway, I've been doing some research, which happily means watching old 80s cartoons. Which also happily means coming across sensational 80s anti-drug messages tacked onto the end of old 80s cartoons.

Check out the end of this particular episode of She-Ra (in which the intrepid heroine was forced to work with arch-enemy Hordak to escape the Dark Dimension, in case you were interested). You're going to have to skip ahead to the six minute mark, but you'll be rewarded with a small furry creature emerging from behind a rock to warn young kiddies against using non-specified - but no doubt highly dangerous - drugs:

I have only vague memories of these incessantly cheery "Hey kids! Don't do drugs!" messages. Possibly because I was in my late 20s before I could actually name three different types of "drugs". (Does Nurofen count?!?)

But it sent me off on a stroll down "Don't Do Stuff" memory lane, courtesy of all those brilliant people over recent years who've dug out their old Beta videos and uploaded shows, ads and more, allowing us to remember the televisual delights of our past in all their cringeworthy glory.

Here's a fun example, from right here in Queensland. Make sure you watch until the very end...

DO THE LIGHT TING! DO THE LIGHT TING!

I don't know about you, but when I come across videos like that I just want to reach back in time, ruffle the 80s' hair and mumble "Whosa-woosa-widdle-wacist-then-hmmm? You are! You are!"

Anybody else have any examples of helpful public awareness advertising? Throw your links in the comments.

Remember November: Rhyming Household Products

Back in the late 80s and 90s, there was a fascination with creating products of convenience that filled a gap you didn't know you had.

For example - sitting on a chair just not comfortable enough?

Plop your hoofs onto the Feet Seat:

Eating on your lap creating too much kinetic tension between your food and your pants? 

Whack your plate on a Stable Table:

At the end of the day, they were selling us ottomans and trays, products that have probably been around since the Stone Age. One can imagine a cave man sitting on one rock and putting his feet up on another; while his recently-gored-by-a-mammoth mate watched ochre paintings while scoffing berries from a piece of slate.

Like my Dad thousands of years later, the cave men would probably even giggle whenever somebody said "Where's the pouffe?"

But throw a silly catcy name on it, and watch the cash roll in. The only difference with these new-wave ottomans and trays was that both were full of beans. Bean bag beans. The kind of beans that once spilled, could never be recollected. For years after a refilling mishap, one would find tiny white beans under couches, in the corner of living rooms, wedged between carpet fibres.

Ultimately, I think it was the beans that led to the rhyming household products' demise. They were just too easily eaten by small children, pets, and people mistaking them for floor Tic-Tacs.

But I sometimes miss the days when you couldn't walk into Kmart without ploughing headfirst into giant pyramids of Feet Seats and Stable Tables. Somebody should bring back modern versions - sit on a "Flair Chair", have your baby on a "Pushin' Cushion", or whip up a truly electric stirfry in a "Shock Wok".

I should get paid for this kind of brainstorming, I really should.

Remember November: Freers

This is probably quite a Brisbane-focused Remember November entry, because I'm not sure how far and wide the tuckshop spread of Freers crisps was.

It's very difficult to find any photographic evidence of the once-beloved snackfood company through image searches. As memory serves, Freers folded sometime in the late 90s, before the internet's true purpose as a nostalgia attic came to the fore. And being as how its products were delicious, but wrappings disposable, it's understandable why no packaging has survived to be snapped, suitable filtered and uploaded.

So I've resorted to drawing a dodgy paintshop-style picture of my favourite Freers product:

Freers Cheese Popcorn (40g).

Ahhhh, you can sense the memories coagulating in the drool seeping from the corner of my mouth.

Freers made a few popcorn varieties, but cheese was the only one I ever went for. There's something about the cheesiness of cheese popcorn that comparable cheese snacks (Twisties, Cheezels, Cheetos) can't actually replicate. I'm not sure if it was a particular type of chemical they put in the seasoning, but boy. That shit was like catnip to primary-school-aged Girl Clumsy.

Our tuckshop stocked 40g bags of Freers popcorn for 40 cents. 40 CENTS. My peak Freers-gorging period was 1991/1992, so this wasn't that long ago. As I recall, Mars Bars were about 80 cents at the time, so even for a chocolate-lover like me, Freers popcorn represented the best possible use of the occasional dollar my mother would give me for a tuckshop treat.

I'd saunter up from the Year 6/Year 7 lunch area once, maybe twice a week, shiny gold dollar clenched in my sweaty, nail-bitten hand. I'd purchase two bags of Freers cheese popcorn, and use the remaining 20 cents for a Funny Face icy pole. I'd down the Funny Face first while the ice was still sharp and full of cola or raspberry flavour. Then I'd bust open the delightfully light yet full Freers bag, drinking in the scent of all that virgin cheese popcorn goodness.

The contents would disappear rather quickly after that.

I'd save the second bag for after school, or eat later at home, secretly in my bedroom, or out for a walk, somewhere no one else could find me and demand some. I didn't like to share.

Sadly my primary school days came to an end, and with them my ready access to cheap delicious Freers popcorn. My high school tuckshop did have deep fried chicken-and-corn bars, but they could never inspire the same sort of devotion.

Freers could occasionally be sourced at Franklins supermarkets, but the popcorn varieties seemed to be discontinued; and then the company wound up, forever dashing my hopes of a cheese popcorn revival.

America seems to have dozens of cheese popcorn options available, but for some reason Australia hasn't embraced that particular form of junk food. The only place I can source it now is from Kernels Popcorn at Chermside, and it's relatively expensive. Certainly no 40 cents, that's for sure. And it's still like catnip for me; I really have to ration out my visits lest I wind up on A Current Affair as some sort of demented popcorn hoarder, sitting Smorg-like on my own increasing body weight of air-popped snacks, batting off nutritionists and sensible people with tubby lard arms.

So it's probably for the best that Freers wound up. But still, I mourn them.

Remember November: Covering Copybooks

Caution: this image could prompt the viewer to break out in cold sweats.

At the start of each school year, rolls of this substance - clear Contact - would be purchased, with the express purpose of extending the lifespan of a textbook or copybook cover.

The last few days of school holidays would be spent allocating blue-lined 64 page copybooks to each forthcoming subject, and embarking on an adventure in measuring, scissoring, peeling, sticking and smoothing out air bubbles.

Air bubbles were the enemy.

By Year Twelve, my Contacting skills were sufficiently polished to deal with my ego's demands for more complicated, prettier designs. I was no artist; but geez I was dab hand with brown paper and a gluestick:

This cover is all that remains of my Year 12 maths copybook. Certainly the workings within were not worthy of being saved all these years, but my James Bond-themed pictorial tribute still impresses me. The Contacted topcoat kept the cover from tearing; even today, shoved in a storage folder in my flat, it remains in excellent condition. I should frame it.

I had others - I remember Marilyn Monroe in particular for an English book - but the James Bond one is the only one I've kept for sentimental reasons.

Now I understand that for many parents, the reality of covering school textbooks and copybooks is not something to be looked back fondly on; rather, it is a yearly trial of patience and skill.

But it's still a real and present challenge to all of us - well, at the very least to those of us who wish to extend the life of our smartphones and tablet computers. The act of placing plastic adhesive covers onto gorilla glass screens requires the same concentration and exact positioning as copybooks did all those years ago.

And air bubbles remain the enemy.

Remember November: Fido Dido

I've heard it said that influenza is to the common cold what a category five cyclone is to a sunshower.

While I had no reason to scoff at the description before, I certainly never will again, given that a bout of Influenza B has gone all Hurricane Sandy on my ass.

I returned from Burma, via Singapore, with symptoms of what I thought was a regular headcold, the latest in a long line of sniffles and sinus problems that I seem to have encountered with alarming super-frequency this year.

But after several days' deterioration, I went back to the doctor to politely suggest this wasn't just a regular cold. Blood tests were ordered, a nasal swab was taken, and a positive confirmation for Influenza B was the result.

For the past six days, all I've been able to do is sleep and stare blankly at the television. Sometimes I even managed to activate the remote control to put something on the television. But basically, it has left me wiped more thoroughly than a baby's .... oh, I don't even have the energy to finish that untoward analogy.

Lesson learned - next year, I'm getting my god damn flu shot.

I've still got a bunch of travel articles either ready-to-go or almost-ready-to-be-written, and I do plan on posting them in coming days/weeks. However, I couldn't help but notice today marks November 1. Two years ago I ran a month-long series called "Remember November", a daily dash of nostalgia served up in bite-sized, hopefully entertaining morsels.

So I thought I'd give it another try. And how appropriate to start with cartoonish early-90s soft drink marketing devices?

I actually remembered the concept of Fido Dido while in Burma. My memories were stirred by the official soft drink brand of Myanmar, named "Blue Mountain". Its official slogan was "Just Drink It!" which sounded more more like an order from the ruling military junta than a tantalising temptation for carbonated beverages. But it reminded me of other drink slogans of my youth.

I don't even remember 7UP existing before Fido Dido, at least not in Australia. The simple, line-drawn, wavy-haired character and his cool-to-be-clear demeanour, were as tightly bound with the PepsiCo-branded lemonade as the "dynamic ribbon device" was with Coca-Cola. People wore Fido Dido T-shirts and badges. Kids at school had Fido Dido pencil cases and rulers. And why? Because Fido Dido was cool.

Fido Dido didn't follow authority. Fido Dido didn't need permission for anything. Fido Dido wore singlets with his own goddamn face on them. Take that, The Man.

Every time 7UP rebranded in the 90s, there would be Fido Dido, in some sort of new incarnation, even occasionally in wild 3D.

Eventually Fido Dido seemed to fade from the public consciousness; like N*Sync's music and Bill Clinton's sexuality, it was just another nonchalantly carefree 90s fad that wouldn't play post 9/11. But sometimes, it's still nice to crack open a 7UP and think about those heady days when a simple cartoon could be simultaneously a corporate shill AND an anti-authority figure.