There are times in every person's life when they say, 'Oh, shit.' Missing the green traffic light is one. Another is buying a fantasamagorical but expensive dress, and sooner thereafter seeing the same dress on sale, and you haven't a hope in hell of exchanging your purchase because it's been too long, you've misplaced the docket, and worn it and it's got white deodorant stains in the armpits, and the cleaner is open. I had a bit of an 'oh, shit' moment today. My laundry has been harbouring an old bean bag, which does nothing. We don't use it. The dog used it ages ago and it's still got hairs. In a fit of esoteric harmonising, I decided to improve the feng shui of the laundry and just turf the bloody thing in the bin (last night was bin night in my street). Today I worked, went for a swim, nagged and helped my kids with their homework, and waited for the tell tale noise that the garbo had been. Soon enough, I heard the truck. I told my kids to keep up the homework, and went outside to drag the bin back in. Now, it's been stinking hot in my home town. There can't have been a snow blizzard. For one thing, it rarely if ever snows in this part of the Hunter Valley, and I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed a drop in temperature. Yet in my gutter, on the nature strip, in front of my neighbour's house, and on the bitumen was a blanket of white. A rather threadbare blanket, to be sure, but enough to make it a blank, albeit a holey one. I blinked and this strange phenomenon, and like St Paul on the Road to Damascus, I saw the scene in my mind's eye: the prongs of the special forklift thing picking up my bin and turning it over, the lid swinging open and the hydraulic equipment shaking my bin over the truck's great tray sending assorted bags and a beanbag tumbling out like an avalanche designed by Dali, the beanbag catching on something and splitting a seam thus sending little white polystyrene balls EVERYWHERE. I looked at the white carnage, and muttered, 'Oh, shit.'
I consider myself to be a caring person in relation to both my neighbours and the environment, and was very mindful of polystyrene being washed into the gutter, so grouchily made my way back into the house and set out cleaning the mess as best I could with an outdoor broom, a long-handled dustpan, and a garbage bag. Those little balls are wretched objects, to say the least. When there is a breeze, the static electricity gets them eddying and ebbing and flowing like the images in a kaleidoscope. If you try and pick them up by hand, they cling to your fingers like tenacious boogers. I didn't do too badly a job. This is not on par with the Exxon Valdez disaster, but I do not like to contribute too greatly to any degradation and/or damage to the environment.
Unlike one of the local coal mines yesterday, which sent a humongous orange cloud of nitric oxide (or something - I think it was nitric oxide) into the air yesterday. Nice one, fuckers. I believe an apology will be issued in the local rag tomorrow. Interestingly, some people photographed the orange cloud, which looked a little like a clown's wig, and uploaded the shots to the community Facebook page. The posts were removed. Hmmmmm. Is this just a tad Silkwood, or am I just paranoid? In any event, in my travails I discovered a link from the local newspaper which should appear in hard copy tomorrow, and posted it. It has remained and not been removed.
Guilty pleasure of the day: I've been listening to 'The Black-Eyed Boys' by Paper Lace. Oh, don't pretend you don't remember it. I nice, bubblegummy one from the mid-70s. In PE sometimes, if it was raining, the teacher made the Year 8 girls do exercises do this song. I was stuck next to a girl who was my class bully, and has grown as sour and toxic as an embittered cane toad. I used to wonder what she was going to do for a face when the cat needed its arse back, but that's clearly never eventuated because the cat was probably too scared to ask for it back, lest it get its face smacked in (a common threat of hers). Well, I do like listening to a bit of Paper Lace, even if it does conjure up a memory of a surly little bitch who was hating on the world as she tried to do her stretches.
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