A Magritte sky

What a cracker of a sky today.

Google 'Magritte' and you'll see what I mean

Visitors II

Mine continue to be of exceptionally high quality.

Siegfried and Erika Leucht, the 161 year-olds (she's 82, he's 79) from across the road popped in yesterday with photos of the camelia from their garden and some goodies.

Just the nicest people who've led a most exciting life.

It started off like this:

They met in post-war Berlin, but couldn't get married, because there was nowhere to live following the mass destruction of property in the bombings.

At about that time, Siegfried's company posted him to Istanbul. So there he is, feeling pretty lonely wandering around Istanbul by himself with his girlfriend back in Germany, when he notices loads of apartments with no curtains.

Mentions it to a co-worker who says "No, it's not that they can't AFFORD curtains - they're all empty."

Formal proposal by mail.

Erika flies down on PanAm 1 and they get married in the German Consulate in 1954.

 From there, they were in Syria, Egypt, Turkey again and Slovenia (I've probably forgotten some)

In 1978, they bought the house across the road from ours.

John Whatley would say: Aren't we lucky people!

Addiction

They put something in the water to keep you quiet.

I'm pretty sure of it.

Either that, or the pills.

Most of the time you drift along in a semi-painfree state (which I figure beats the other option), but sometimes they get it wrong.

They doubled up the dosage of the little pink one yesterday and I was AWAAAY.

Almost as good as the opiates I got last week at the Ritual Slaughter, which made the wall look a bit different to reality.

Especially the picture

So I told them that the new pills were so good, I couldn't even feel my legs and could I please have some more?

Bad move.

Back to standard rations.

Head torture practitioner

"You have to be a bit of a sadist in this line of work" she said

This is Annika, the physiotherapist.

You wouldn't suspect that under this gentle and attractive exterior lurks the soul of the Marquis de Sade.

Up and down the racetrack, up and down the stairs until she dumps you back on the bed, a wheezing wreck.

"And tomorrow" she says cheerfully " we'll have you on the bar. Just like Rudolf Nureyev"

I know they've got me wearing white stockings, but do I look like a bloody ballet dancer....?

Cabin fever

This is a very useful device.
You can hang on to it and drag yourself around in bed.
They can hang transfusions and drips and stuff off it.
And you can use it quite effectively to confuse the wardens.
Wait until you hear them lurking around in the corridor with their instruments of torture, do a quick 30 pull-ups and your blood pressure shoots way up.
Your pulse is over 100, too
You've never seen them run for a doctor so fast....

Gods in white, angels in blue

The wardens come around daily to make sure we haven't absconded.

Dr Koshewa who - being quite handy with hacksaws, hammers, screwdrivers, routers and similar kit - checks to make sure that Leg 2.0 hasn't fallen off yet and Nurse Miriam tags along to make sure I'm behaving.

Seriously, though.

Really don't think I could be in better hands.

Especially Nurse Miriam's........

Wired up

I thought they had me wired up for video the other day.

Until I realised that- instead of RGB - it was pretty much RRR.

Aaaah. Drainage tubes!

Those things they ram 5cm into your thigh under anaesthetic.

And rip out without.....

The racetrack

This is the racetrack.

Every 2 hours, you're allowed ("allowed" is good - the wardens lurk around with whips....) to walk the length of the corridor and then back to bed.

Not as easy as it sounds.

Given that when they replaced the crook bits with titanium, they also buggered around with the thigh muscles and made some stuff disappear totally, so that your foot flops around with a mind of its own and you have to force it straight as well as concentrating on which crutch to use for which step.

And not look down.

Or fall over.

And avoid the other 30 or so folks in various states of perambulatory disrepair who are doing the same thing......

Before and after

Now, how was that?

Best foot forward...?

So they cut open my leg instead...

Juke Joint [Listen] by Johnny Red Sovine
Don't Bogart That Joint [Listen] by Little Feat from The Last Record Album
High Class Joint (live) [Listen] by Brinsley Schwarz from Live at The Top Rank, Cardiff, Wales, June 1974

Tags: Joint, hip replacement, Johnny Red Sovine, Little Feat, Brinsley Schwarz

That's what friends are for.

The coffee here's terrible.

I think they make it by roasting used hypodermic syringes. mixing the residue with the contents of the gazundas and straining it through soiled sheets.

So it was a real treat to get a latte from the TSOW, personally couriered up the hill from the market by Ms jb this morning.

And my favourite coffee lady, Brigitte Müller-Dildei, popped a nougat bar on top as a get well present

Now, wasn't that nice?

You can tell me what you like......

..one leg's now longer than the other.

I tried to point this out to the surgeon the other day, but he shot off on a tangent about how the titanium for the new bit is sourced from the same blacksmith who makes suspension kit for Ferrari F1 cars.

But coming from a long line of blacksmiths, I know what a dodgy lot we are...

So if you see someone lurching along with a distinct list to starboard, it'll be me

Visitors

The guy in the bed next me gets so many visitors, it's not funny.

Take that literally. I'm checking with lawyers whether I can publish this, but let's just say that there's a distinct lack of firewall between vocal chords and what goes for grey matter...

I make up with quality.

Ms jb, of course, who keeps me on the straight and narrow and plies me with goodies from Italian delicatessens and French patisseries.
Plus more affection than I deserve.

And then Grace Niklas from Ireland, with Mum, Dad and Grandad. (Links scattered through YMBFA and MDP but I can't set them up from here.

Suffice to say that Stephan thought it important that I got to meet his daughter, which was a great honour for me and a big thrill for the folks on Ward 5B at the Vincenz Hospital

Vampires 2

I wish they'd make up their bloody minds...

First of all, they drain of litres of the stuff.

Now they reckon they took too much and need to put some back.

I think I should have asked to see their medical qualifications before throwing myself at their mercy.

They're probably all a bunch of vets.....

Don't ask me... (about Hip-Hop)

How very droll....

Here's something to be going on with, anyway

Oscar [Listen] by The Cool Kids from Thats Stupid / Re-Motivation
Press Play [Listen] by Snoop Dogg from Ego Trippin'
She Said (Remix) [Listen] by J Dilla from Jay Deelicious 95-98: The Delicious Vinyl Year
The Troglodyte Wins [Listen] by Busdriver from Roadkill Overcoat
Call Me D-Nice [Listen] by D-Nice from Call Me D-Nice

Torture

I think I've worked out why they're torturing me.

I appear to have offended the doctor.

All this under influence of morphine or whatever goodies they pumped me fulll of yesterday, I'm supposed to have accused him of stealing my dinner. Noting that he looked exceptionally wellfed for doctor.

But I fear it was comment as he was leaving that made him go a bit dark on me.

Something along the lines of 'Who does he think he is? A fucking doctor or something?'

I think grovelling my be involved to get things back on track.....

Here we go again

This is becoming a little too regular for my living......

University Clinic last year, Vincenz Klinik this year.

Checked all the aural appendages which apppear to intact, so they appear to have had a go at my leg instead....

I don't believe it......

They really DO write on the leg that's about to be amputated (or whatever it is they plan to do today) with Magic Marker.
So I didn't need to have 'Not this one' tatooed on the other leg after all.
Wish they'd told me before.....

HYmini - Must have

Wired Magazine is fatal for we Early Adopters/Gadget Boys predisposed to terminal geekness.

The HYmini will charge up its 5v battery in a 9 mph/15 kmh wind and can then be milked via USB 2.0.
50 bucks at hymini.net.

The line starts behind me........

Fused

This is a gem.

MCASD at La Jolla's Soundwaves exhibition is a stunner and Sean Duffy's installation of 2 fused turntables, with 2 tone arms offsetting the same record, is the pick of the litter.

It's dead easy to simulate the effect - here's Bob Dylan's "I am a lonesome hobo" virtually fused in Audacity - but the joy of the live experience is in the infinite variation that you get every time the process is restarted.

By some lucky gallery staff member....

Tags: MCASD, San Diego, La Jolla, Sean Duffy, fused turntables, Bob Dylan, "I am a lonesome hobo"

Roll with it

This is how Tim Bavington sees Oasis's Roll with it .

Each note has a colour, the length of the note defines the width and the bass line runs along the bottom.

Part of the excellent SoundWaves exhibition at the La Jolla location of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

And here's Little by little for good measure

Calisthenics

Steve Fullmer is explaining his sleep-inducing calisthenics.

"You stretch your legs waaaay out so they touch the door, but you have to keep your bottom on the bed"

I do a doubletake and shoot a quick look across the room.

Yep, LOOKS like Steve.

And it SOUNDS like him,too.

But "bottom"?

This is Steve Fullmer, the iconic ceramic artist who makes peeing dogs.

And a new line in farting dogs.

With a removable fart.

"And then you stick your ass WAAAY up in the air"

Ah, THAT's Steve.

Had me worried for a minute.....

Tags: Steve Fullmer, calisthenics, peeing dog, farting dog, ceramics

Don't ask me...(about cosmetics)

I claim to know little (if anything) about these things, but anyway...

There's a new cosmetic product on the market and the womenfolk around here tend to prick up their shell-likes when "new" is involved.

Luckily, this Snowberry outfit has a limited number of outlets.

Unluckily, they have one in Auckland.

So off we toddle to Smith and Caughey's, the closest thing you'll get to Harrods in this part of the world, to do some research.

After I'd recovered from shock, I started working out what this really means in $ and c.

I'm used to the silly prices that the womenfolk sling out of the window for fashion and hairdos and similar, but this is a paradigm shift, as they say.

$225 for 50ml of the stuff!

That's $4500 a litre.

"But you only need a few drops" said the salesperson, as she wafted smelling salts under my nose to bring me around

Clinique appears to be the favoured brand at our place, so I did an unobtrusive comparison.

A mere $704 a litre.

A deal.

But I think I'll stick to my favoured brand at an eminently affordable $0.0029 a litre.

Tap water

Tags: Snowberry, Clinique, Smith and Caughey

Shave for a cure

A year or so back, I got involved in Bloggers For A Cure, raising money for cystic fibrosis research.

Jeff Giles over at Popdose kicked it off to support Scott Malchus, a fellow blogger whose son Jacob is living with CF, and together with a bunch of other people we raised a couple of thousand bucks.

Now there's Shave for a Cure, a week long fund-raiser run by the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation of New Zealand.

Just got back from inspecting the gorse on the farm (bloody hell, don't it grow quick...) and saw this on TV:



Pure goose bumps/lump-in-the-throat/blink-back-the-tears brilliance.

No actors - just Ryan (9 years old with leukaemia), his Dad and a bunch of friends

The website's even better.

They've got Fidelity Life to pop a buck into the bag for every time someone clicks on the ad on the website.

They're up to about $2000 and Fidelity's going to go all the way up to $10,000.

So get over there and make them put their hands deep into their corporate pockets.

And see if you can work out out who the music's by.

Coldplay with Edge from U2?

Update: It's "The Great Unknown" [listen] by Evermore from Real Life.

Linda from the LBF has this neat story:

They paid for the rights to the music, the band saw the ad and said "Money? We don't want any money" and gave them the song for free.

Only in New Zealand

Tags: Bloggers For A Cure, Jeff Giles, Popdose, Jefito, Scott Malchus, cystic fibrosis research, Shave for a Cure, Leukaemia and Blood Foundation, New Zealand, Fidelity Life

True Story

French Customs officer goes into a patisserie and asks

"Have you got anything to d'eclair?"

East meets West

A wheat beer (nominally from Germany) and a Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc (guaranteed from New Zealand) rub shoulders on the patio at Moonshadows overlooking the Pacific in Malibu.

If it just wasn't for the bloody song.

Couldn't get it out of my head all day....

Those moon-faced looks

My first thought was "Oh, Tommy Hilfiger's a VERY equal opportunities employee. Hiring all those hearing-impaired kids. Good on them".

On closer inspection, it turns out that they've all got these dinky little walky-talky things with a Secret Service-type gizmo stuck in their ears

Not deaf at all, in fact.

I guess it's pretty useful if you're protecting the President, but in a broom closet-sized store in the Carlsbad outlet mall...?

To the embarrassment of the retinue, I inquired with one of the children masquerading as staff as to their (the headset's) usefulness.

"Well, some of us are here and some are out back, so we have to be in contact all the time....?"

Valley Girl semi question mark at the end.

"Ah" I said "Just in case you get lost"

"Yeah, and we have to call the manager sometimes, cause there are some things that we can't do....?".

"Like sell alcohol and stuff?"

Moon-faced look. Slack-jawed, too.

I can't help it....

Knock, knock

"Who's there?

"Hi!"

"Hi who?"

"Hi Drangea"

Stunning example of the species in Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand

Beer is good for you. Discuss.

Beer is not only healthy - lots of fluid, chock full of vitamins and yeast etc - but it can save you from financial ruin.

Which is something not to be toyed with in these trying times....

Jones the Grocer in Auckland has got it right - order a beer with your steak sandwich and you'll save $145.

Definitely my kind of people.

I have a friend who's an artist

Which sounds suspiciously familiar to Richard Feynman's "Ode on a flower", but anyway.

She's very direct.

If she sees something she doesn't like, it "shouldn't be on the planet".

If you call her on the cellphone and the call's breaking up, she doesn't say that.

She says "You're just burps and farts"

This is her story of "anal living".

One of her collectors is married to a man who likes things "just so".

They've moved into a McMansion in a new subdivision.

She's invited round to dinner and doesn't see a lot of her work on the walls, so she (discreetly) asks her hostess where the other pieces are.

"Oh, HE doesn't think they GO..."

HE, on the other hand, is inordinately proud of his size-of-a-small-car stainless steel gas barbecue.

Sparklingly new looking.

"Wow. Did you just buy it?" asks the artist.

"Oh no, but you have to keep it CLEAN"

Continues.

"We've used it all summer. I just HATE food smells in the house"

"Do you poo outside then, too" asks the artist.

Keeping things trimmed

Crikey, we've got a lot of lawn down here.

Forgot how big the section is...

So I bought myself a moa today

Older readers

Kids' books are frequently quite excellent.

I heard Paul Jennings, an Australian author, on National Radio the other day. Intelligent, eloquent and funny.

Paradox Books in Devonport didn't have anything in stock. Neither di Unity Books in High Street in Auckland.

Dymocks is a chain (and I mostly try to avoid them), but they had it in stock.

"Over here", she said leading me to the "Older Readers" department.

"Oh, that's nice" I said " A department especially for people of my age group. Larger print, I suppose"

"No" she said " This is for 12 year olds"

I give up......