By The Rivers Of Babble-On

So this post is a thing a mate posted somewhere. As far as I can tell, it's an Internet meme that claims to be "real metaphors" taken from "real essays" somewhere. Where they're supposed to be from changes a lot, as do the metaphors from time to time. I think the idea is to point out how stupid the students who wrote them are.
So, two things. The grammar Nazi in me wants to point out that they're not metaphors - they're all similes, dumbshits. Also, they're not stupid. They're brilliant. It takes real imagination to come up with stuff like this. I wish more people wrote like it. Except the one with the bowling balls - that's a Douglas Adams rip-off.

Enjoy.


The following metaphors were found in New South Wales Year 12 English essays in 2003.

* Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

* She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature prime English beef.

* She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

* Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

* He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

* The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

* The little boat gently drifted across the pond - exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

* He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

* McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

* From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Sex in the City" comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

* Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

* The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot oil.

* John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

* He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

* She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

* She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

* It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

* Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

* The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

* The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

* "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted; her breasts heaving like a university student on $1-a-beer night.

* He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

* The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

Things Are New

So I just got this Blogger account. I posted all my old blogs to it.
Now, I have a MySpace, a Bebo, a Facebook, a Livejournal (I don't use it, I couldn't be bothered learning the system or whatever) a thing called a Ning, and this. My friend also suggested getting a Deviant Art for my art-related stuff.
That's too many internet-based social-networking time-eaters.
The only thing I use them all for is not keeping in touch with friends. I mean, it's kind of cool to see your old friends from school or whatever (and in many cases it's far from cool, because you hated them) but I think it's got to the stage where it's just not worth the time having all these things takes up.
Why can't people all just use the same one? Or, preferably, none at all? I swear, life was way simpler before all this shit came out.
Then, if it wasn't for social networking, you would probably not have the profusion of happily disinformed (new word, I just made it up) rants about Some Guy's average life. Like this one.

Why am I doing this? Well, my journalism tutor suggested it was a good thing to have a blog that prospective employers can check out. Apparently it's the done thing to Google someone if you're thinking of giving them a job.
So it's like a CV, except one that includes all the minutiae of everyday life. Like interesting coincidences, the fact I don't like beekeeping, or my old car (RIP, baby) or wearing tight pants.

I swear, if anyone hires me off the strength of a blog, I'm going to seriously reconsider the job I'm applying for.

Stuff and Yossarian

There is a lot of stuff that isn't great. I have a long list. Here are a few things I particularly feel like bitching about.

Selling Your Awesome Old Beat Up Car:

I had a car. It was a white, 1986 Toyota Corona station wagon and it was the best car in the world. Sure, it was kind of crappy. If by "kind of" you mean "extremely," but it was mine and I'd put literally hundreds of hours into it keeping it alive and warranted. I tentatively called it Yossarian, after the character in Catch-22 who objects to being killed. It was my beach car. We did countless runs to awesome Northland beaches down incredibly shitty roads in it, stuff that you wouldn't expect of a four-wheel-drive. I had dozens of near-misses and two accidents, one my fault, the other not. People had spewed in it. It was full of sand and fossilised garbage. There was a slightly tangy smell about it I suspect came of too many fishing trips and missing bait. It was rusty, and obnoxiously noisy, because the previous owner had seen fit to equip it with a loudening exhaust. I had racked up thousands of dollars in fines in that car, much more than it was worth. I had even made out with girls in it. I made a hood ornament for it with a Dragonball Z figurine – Goku – which I super-glued to the front bumper. It was the greatest.

Then it opted to start overheating every time I turned it on. The last time I drove it (unregistered, unwarranted) was when I moved house. I had an actual tonne (or more) of stuff in the back and a double bed on the roof. It was overheating like mad and so I drove fast (more air keeps the engine cool, better than idling) and took a lot of back streets and ran a red light or so. Despite everything, it got me moved. I think I may have patted the dashboard and said "thanks." After that, it sat in my backyard for a couple of months until I decided it was time to flick it. It had gotten to the stage where getting any amount of money for it was a better deal than me spending money to fix it. So I sold it for $150 and boy was I cut up. I'd had it for nearly five years. Luckily, it was bought by the next-door neighbour and so I get to see it every day when I cycle past. It's up on blocks – the neighbour was quick to scavenge my crappy mag wheels – and I think his plan is to fix it and give it to his mum. I hope so. I'd rather someone was driving it than it getting turned into scrap straight away.

Whoa, that was lengthy. I've forgotten everything else I was meant to be complaining about now. Oh well. I'll remember.

The Advantages of Tight Pants

A friend of mine showed up the other day wearing tight pants. Not spandex-tight, but definitely tight jeans. Black. This isn't his usual style – he's been stuck in the baggy pants limp bizkit late 90's sk8er rut as long as I have. Now he was bowing to the new fashion gods. The ones that wear tight pants.

I asked him where he'd got them.

"Demo Streetwear are having a liquidation sale," he said. He'd gotten the pants – worth around $125 at the usual RRP – for thirty-five bucks.

Well, this was good, so I arranged to meet him at the shop the next day.

I ended up getting a new pair of Lee jeans (whoa! Labelled! Go sweatshops!) for $35. They were worth $160, so I think it was a good buy. Only thing is, of course, with the kids these days wearing what they do, they were a bit… tight.

I decided to wear them for a bit before deciding whether to put them on TradeMe.

Well, two days on and I'm still wearing them. (Not two days straight, but you get the idea.) They're good. And they kind of make my old ones – all of my old, baggy pants – look sorta stupid.

Oh man, I knew this would happen one day. I'm slowly turning metrosexual. Hmm, there's a word you don't see that much anymore. That's because I'm five years late to the trend, of course.

But there are some good reasons for wearing tight pants. I've been coming up with a mental list for the last couple of days. Here are some of them.

• They keep everything in its right place, like the Radiohead song.
• When you're biking (I bike everywhere, except when I take the bus) the chain can't eat your pants leg. Unlike my other pants, which I have to tuck into my sock, like a crazy old man.
• You look a bit more emo. Or fashionable or whatever. Which leads to emo girls looking at you (maybe) and emo girls are hot.
• You feel like a rock star – possibly because you can sing a bit higher than before.
• Your friends age 16-22 think you're one of those old guys who still "have it."

Well, that's all I can do for the advantages. There are plenty of drawbacks.

• Your friends age 16-22 think you're one of those old guys who still "have it." I hate those guys.
• Your old mates think you're a pillock, and will continue to until they get with the programme
• It's hot and there's no ventilation
• All of a sudden, all of your shitty old shoes are obsolete, because with tight pants they look like clown shoes. Ditto pretty much everything else in wardrobe.
• Your sperm die. You can just tell.

I think I've come to realise having even a microscopic amount of fashion-consciousness is a slippery slope. A slippery, expensive slope, studded with infected razor blades. Still, time and fashion will roll on, everyone's baggy jeans will wear out, and by 2010 everyone will be wearing tight pants, whether they like it or not.

Cool. It'll be like the 70's, only with global warming and deader Beatles.

Yes, the universe IS out to get you

This is a weird true story that just happened so I think I'd better write it down while it's fresh. I think it's proof that the universe is messing with me. Read it and you'll see.
About a week back a friend of mine lent me a book - the Collected Short Stories of Mark Twain.
I was keen to check it out, because I'd read Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and liked them.
"There's this one short story, near the end," said my friend. "It'll blow your mind. It's the ending that's crazy.
There's just no other way to end it. You'll see."
It had been a weird night when I got the book. A discussion about assorted stuff had turned into talking about the
meaning of life, the universe and everything. And quantum physics. I don't know any quantum physics - I just know about them, and like what I've heard. My friend, on the other hand, actually knows stuff - he's done quantum physics at uni - so it was enlightening.
The discussion eventually ended up at books - stuff we'd read, stuff we hadn't. We talked things as disparate as Douglas Adams and Dante's Inferno. Sometime around now the subject of the Mark Twain story came up.
I took it home and to Auckland with me. I didn't read any of it - I was busy with another book. Then, this morning, it was raining, I got up late, and I didn't want ride my bike into town to do magazine work.
I decided to read the story over breakfast. Procrastination. Kind of.
The story was called "The Mysterious Stranger." There's no way I can write this story without providing a plot summary of some kind. It goes a bit like this; there is a kid in a medieaval Austrian village where they're still firmly stuck in the Middle Ages. Him and his mates meet an angel called Satan. (Not Satan satan, but it may as well be. It's complicated.) This angel has the power to do pretty much anything. He is interested in humans in much the same way as scientists are interested in bacteria. He sets about messing with their lives in ways that seem to the humans in the know to be positively barbaric, but are to him neutral, because he can't tell good from evil. He doesn't much care for humans, seeing us as below the level of animals, and derides morality as a farce. He also takes the boys on instantaneous trips around Earth explaining the human condition. The boys he meets in the village beg him, as he's essentially omnipotent, to change the lives of the villagers for the better. Satan, seeing no reason not to, does - usually by killing them of making them insane.
One of the cool ideas is Satan can only alter their lives along the lines of probability, and can see their futures extrapolated from events in their past. The smallest event in the life of one person changes their future. Satan, who is apparently outside of time, does this all the time. Why is never really explained, but the best reason seems to be "because he can."
Then the story ends. How? Well, it's crazy. And there's just no other way it can end. Read it yourself. You can check it out here.
Now, about half-way through the story - before I got to the bit about life and choice being just one big chain of unalterable circumstance - I nearly rode into town. It had stopped raining, and I had plenty of work to do. But I didn't go. Because I wanted to finish the story.
So I read on, and got to the bit about choices, coincidence, chaos and circumstance. I've read this kind of stuff before, but it still blew my mind.
I finished the story, wondering how my life would have been unalterably different if I'd left half an hour earlier. But I hadn't. Argh, mental mouse-wheel!
I got to the office, and within five minutes, the editor goes:
"Hey Josh, have you read any Mark Twain?"
I swear, I knew where it was going before he said anything else.
"I read a story by him this morning," I said. Or something similar. And the editor types in a web address and brings up a video on YouTube. Inevitably, maybe, the video is part of a claymation series called "The Adventures of Mark Twain. The one he's showing me is called "Satan Visits the Children."
It's the same story I'd read that morning. The stripped down, animated version. If anything, it was creepier than the written story was.
I told the editor the full story. He was mildly impressed. I'm still wondering what to make of it. If anything.

I hate bees

I hate bees.
Most people don't mind bees so much, unless they're allergic. They probably figure having delicious honey is worth the occasional sting to a bare foot. Not me though. I work as a beekeeper sometimes. I have a right to hate the little bastards.
You may have seen beekeepers doing their thing at some time, perhaps removing a swarm. The guys moving around slowly in their white suits with the hoods, bees flying about. Looks placid, doesn't it? Kinda fun? Nah. Beekeeping is about as much fun as a descent into the seventh circle of Hell. I'll explain.

I don't think many people realise exactly what it is beekeepers do. They vaguely imagine beehives going into a factory and honey appearing out the other end, magically, Willy-Wonka-style. Well, that's what I used to think. Of course, the reality is way different. Most people also think that the problem with beekeeping would be getting stung. Wrong, again. Getting stung is a minor problem compared to the main business, which is mostly lifting things. Heavy things. Beehives, namely.

Bees make honey. You knew that already. They make it in hives. You knew that too. What you might not know is that a beehive full of honey weighs about 60 kilogrammes. When taking honey off hives, beekeeping involves lugging lots of these heavy-ass things onto a truck. As honey is made in summer, this means this job usually takes place in sunlight and hot, hot temperatures. In any other job, this would be alright. You could take your shirt off. Of course, beekeepers wear a bee-suit, to prevent the angry insects whose food you are stealing from killing you with a thousand vicious stings. The bee-suit is made of heavy canvas, and there's as a pair of thick leather gauntlets that come up to your elbows. The hood (or veil) is thick mesh, which you can see out of but - somehow - contrives to keep fresh air out. The ensemble is complete with a set of heavy rubber gumboots. The result of wearing this get-up is that you get ridiculouly, stupidly hot, very, very fast. You sweat actual buckets. Sweat makes the suit even more impervious to air (and makes it easier for the bees to sting through, wich I'll get to shortly) and you soon feel like you're stewing in a hot, wet, canvas oven. The sweat gets in your hood-mesh and makes it hard to see. Your face itches. You scratch it, or wipe moisture away, and - surprise! - a bee stings you on the face. Now the urge to scratch is even worse.
It gets better. Bees, as you'd expect, fly all over the place, and land on your suit. Because bees can smell bee venom, and it pisses them off, and your suit is liberally coated in stings because bee-suits have been used by about ten other part-time beekeepers and has never ever been washed, the bees land all over you. Sometimes they just want a bracing drink of sweat. Mostly, they want to find a hole in the suit (and there are always holes) and sting you. Most of the holes are around the cuffs near the boots, where the elastic tends to go. This soon results in the indescribably hideous sensation of bees crawling up your legs, stinging as they go. This usually happens at a terrible time - mostly when you're carrying a fucking heavy hive full of honey - and you have to stumble to the truck, load the hive, and then go into a kind of leaping, desperate dance while you try to squash the bee in the folds of your pants, or failing that, forcing it to sting you before it heads too far north. The sacrifice is worth it, as I hear a sting to the genitals is amazingly painful. No jokes about swelling either, please. Ironically enough, if you're stung in the equipment, it won't work for the next week.
Bees get in everywhere, even where there aren't any holes. I don't know how. They make regular and unpleasant appearances inside your hood. This is horrible, because they're hard to kill without them stinging you somewhere very painful, like in your eyes. The best method, I find, is to bash them into your forehead. Seasoned beekeepers don't bother, as you're going to get stung anyway. A plus is that you get immune to the stings after a while (not that they get any less painful.) A drawback is that there's a fine line between "immune" and "suddenly really allergic for some reason." There are plenty of cases of blase beekeepers dropping dead of anaphalactic shock when they've been immune to stings for years.

This brings me to the guys I work for. They're insane. Not only do they wander around with no beesuits amongst swarms of angry bees, but they work the most ridiculous hours. The head guy, Peter, habitually works 18 hour days, sometimes turning in 90 hour weeks. No kidding. It's an interesting fact that Sir Edmund Hillary was a beekeeper before turning Everest-conquering mountaineer. It's not surprising. Our guys could saunter up Everest before lunch, and they'd poke around for a bit to see if they could put hives there too. That's another thing - our hives are in the most inaccessable locations. Many sites can only be reached by adventurous four-wheel-driving, which makes things interesting when you are coming back with two tonne of hives on the back of the truck. Working long hours has a certain effect on the bee-guys' social lives. Peter didn't know the Twin Towers had been toppled until three days after it happened, when he was asked his opinion on the matter. Their tastes in culture are strange. Most subscribe to Peter's theory that music calms the savage bees. They get their kids to make them mix CD's, (somehow they found the time to get married) which are often a bit strange. It's slightly surreal listening to "Ring of Fire," (very apt) followed by Celine Dion and a bit of Westlife, and then some Nirvana. I have a theory that the bees are angriest during Westlife, which is funny, because so am I.

So why do I do it? Well, the money's good. But only if by "good" you mean "11 bucks an hour." So maybe I do it for the nice sense of accomplishment you get from doing a job you reallly, really hate, and fact that once home, you will be free of bees for 12 whole hours.

Okay, this isn't exactly true either. You see, when you have been working with the horrible little bastard insects for fifteen hours straight, you find that when you shut your eyes you see bees everywhere. It's like being on a boat, getting off, and finding yourself still rocking back and forth on dry land, except in your eyes. If this wasn't unpleasant enough, when you sleep, you dream of bees.

Oh wait, there is a plus side. I get free honey. But when you've been cooped up with and covered in the stuff for days on end, are very familiar with the little stinging shits that make it, and have personally loaded tonnes and tonnes of the stuff, you really do get a bit sick of it.