Do You Open Your Mouth To Change Feet?

I do. I have a couple of stories to share.

Opening mouth to change feet story 1.
Used to go to the soccer every second weekend and meet a mate and three of his mates. We all stood in the same place. Then he started coming with his girlfriend. I didn't like her. She gave me a hard time about not drinking, not singing enough, and generally not having a good time. I was having a good time but wanted her to lay off. In short, she was rather obnoxious.

At half time in one match my mate and his girlfriend went off to buy some beer. I turned around to the other guys and said, "I'd better watch out for because if he's rooting that he'll root anything."
Well, two of the three guys roared with laughter and nearly wet themselves. No joke, it was a full minute later that they were able to gather any sort of composure. The third guy then said to me, "That's my sister you're talking about."

Open the ground and swallow me up. Did I feel little or what? Then he added, "The only reason I haven't hit you already is because I hate the bitch too."

Things changed soon after this and his girlfriend is ok by me. These two are now married. And have a sprog. Don't hate me if you read this.

Opening mouth to change feet story 2.
Next story involved the conflict in Bosnia. I was working at a new gold mine site out bush and was in the TV room with a few other blokes just watching the news. They had a story about how the Bosnians had no weapons and the Americans wouldn't allow them to arm themselves for self defence.

Big mouth here piped up with, "Why don't this just give guns to everybody and then they can keep half of each other and at least the problem with be half sorted out?"
Guy sitting nearby turned to me and said, "My family is over there caught up in all of this."

I felt even smaller than my other off-the-cuff remark previously mentioned. Needless to say I avoided this bloke at all cost until the job was finished. He looked like he wanted to kill me.


Having successfully changed feet I now keep my mouth shut. Until the next opportunity, that is.

We Need To Clean Up The Streets In Cannington

Not that the streets are noticeably full of itinerants or prostitutes but they are unsightly anyway. Perhaps that has more to do with the fact that I love to squash snails on my walks. I almost go out of my way to kill them.

Take this morning for instance. It had been raining overnight and my morning walk takes me past quite a bit of residential area. That's where the best plants are to eat, I guess. I'm glad that I took my umbrella today as it rained for at least 30 minutes and I would have gotten satched. Or saturated, if you don't speak Strine. In one instance I was able to squash three snails with one step. They were rather abundant.

So come on Canning City Council, clean the streets. The bodies of probably a few hundred lifeless, squashed snails are now littering your streets and it has become unsightly. I demand something be done about it. Perhaps I should take some photos to post on the blog. They stick around for days afterwards.

I Now Have Big, Howling Knobbies

No, this is not a posting about my man boobs. On Saturday I rode down to WA Salvage in Cannington to buy a raincoat and dropped in to KMart to get some tyres and tubes for my bike. As I have some sort of mountain bike the tyres had to suitable and they are big knobbies rather reminiscent of 4WD tyres. And they make a lovely howling sound as I'm cruising along.

Sunday morning was wet and misty and rather ruined my mood to have a hit of golf. I buggerised around with the tap in the bathroom and stopped the leak. It was leaking at a rate of 150mL/min which equates to 78840L/yr. Egad!! Managed to stop the leak in the toilet and plugged the sprinkler in the backyard under the paving slabs. Destroyed a screwdriver in the process but not to worry.

In the arvo I watched a bit of A1 GP racing, had a nap, and watched the finish of the race. By this stage it was 3 o'clock and a beautiful day outside so I decided to head down to Riverton Bridge and hire a canoe for an hour. Rode the bike and discovered that the canoe man hadn't showed so made the decision to ride around the large park surrounding the river. Lovely day for an extended bike ride. Bit of birdlife around and Spring is a nice time of the year.

Wild Ducks. Ferocious indeed.
Aussie Magpie.
Green Parrot, not sure which type exactly
That lovely green parrot again. Managed to get fairly close.
Pink Galah.
Not sure what this timid fella is called.
Cockatoo, not a sulfur-crested one.

Neo Calls Again

Hands up those of you who don't like being called by Indian call centre staff? Yes, I thought so. Hands down now people.

Yesterday I received a call along the lines of, "Hello, this is Neo. I'm calling on behalf of Optus Mobile...."
"G'day Neo. How ya going? It's been a couple of weeks since you called."
That flabbergasted him somewhat. I told him that he had called me a couple of weeks ago and then put me through to Mike or Chris. It was Chris actually. Neo was a bit shocked that I remembered him and thanked me for it. Come off it, how many people called Neo call you on a regular basis? This guy stood out in my mind.

Interestingly he sounded more Danish than Indian so I asked him if he was in fact in an Indian call centre. He said yes and soon he would be calling on the UK instead of Australia. Obviously he has called everybody here in Oz as he has called me twice. So if you are in the UK tell him I said "Hi" if he comes calling on you. What sort of a name is Neo for an Indian, I ask you? These fans of The Matrix are a little on the fanatical side.

When I was talking to his workmate Chris a couple of weeks ago he promised to halve my phone bill. So I got my latest bill and we talked it through. The line rental would be $10 cheaper for the first six months then it would go back to being $4 dearer and you had to sign up for a two year contract. Based on my last bill I would be paying $4 more per month, for the first six months, on local calls. So the first six months would be only $6/mth cheaper and the remaining 18 months would be $8/mth dearer.

Hmmm, I don't think so. His promise could not be fulfilled. Sorry, but Optus aren't going to get this frugal bastard's business if it means I have to pay more.

Out In The Boonies

"Out in the boonies" is an interesting term and I'm sure that many of you are uncertain of its origin. Well let me enlighten you.

Out in the boonies is a cricketing term meaning that you are batting well and getting on top of the bowling and looking good to score a century when you inexplicably get out in the 30s or 40s. It came about from a 5' 2" Tasmanian cricketer by the name of David Boon.

Early in his career for Tasmania he was known as a good batsmen who regularly made 30s and 40s but was criticised for needing to turn them into 80 and 90s if he wished to play test cricket. Obviously David Boon stopped getting out in the boonies and went on to play test cricket for Australia and become vice captain.

Another memorable moment occurred when Boonie drank 52 cans of beer on the flight from Sydney to London. He was, in this case, out just after the boonies.

P.S. - The Poms weren't out in the boonies either.

Lightning Strikes Twice

They say that lightning never strikes the same place twice. People in Bali won't be thinking that today.

I woke up this morning and turned the radio on. It is nice to be able to lie there and fill my head with the latest news before getting up to attend to the duties of the day. Not great to be greeted with a story about more bombings having been conducted in Bali and at least 25 people killed and several in a critical condition.

I hope they catch the bastards responsible for this. String 'em up by their balls I say. The world can do without this sort of rubbish.

Perhaps I am more upset by this than the London bombings, as they were a little more to be expected, as it is on Australia's doorstep and has hit Bali again. Why do the Balinese deserve this? It's time to build the Jemaah Islamiah bomb - one that will kill only members of the terrorist group.

Pretty Hard To Win Win When You're Playing Against A Team Of Twelve

Pretty Hard To Win When You’re Playing Against A Team Of Twelve

There are fewer teams in the Hyundai A-League than there were in the old National Soccer League so it would be quite reasonable to assume that the standard of refereeing would be higher as there are fewer referees required. How wrong that assumption is and was evidenced last night.

Glory played Sydney FC and it was one of the worst refereed games in living memory.  

• One of the Glory’s players was booked for a professional foul, probably as the last defender taking down an opponent with the ball, when the Sydney player tripped over by himself. And the replay clearly showed that.


• There were a number of handballs that went unnoticed.


• The most obvious handling of the ball outside of the area by a goalkeeper that I’ve seen and neither the referee’s assistant (linesman), or more appropriately the referee’s partner in crime, or the referee did anything about it.


• The other referee’s assistant signalled a Sydney FC goal kick, changed his mind to a corner, and then indicated a goal kick. No. bloody. idea.

Commentary from one of the spectators standing in front of me was that the referee wanted to make a name for himself. Twit, idiot, bastard, cheat, bent, paid-off, crooked and no-hoper spring to mind. And they are just the clean names.

Glory went down 2-1 in front of 13157 spectators which wasn’t too bad considering that the weather was not the best and so my newly purchased raincoat came in very handy along with the fact that the game didn’t start until 7:40 pm which is too late for a lot of families to attend. Bloody TV rights to blame.

Peace and Harmourny - What Does It Mean?

Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Bummer, attended an International Conference for Peace and Harmony in Sydney yesterday. Draped in the background was a large banner with "Peace and Harmourny" and do you think I can find a picture on the Net to share? What is harmourny and is there any significance in the fact that his speech included muslims and the word "armour" is included?

I have more questions than answers. It's about time we heard from the Minister for Education and his thoughts on the spelling abilities of Australians.

Things Are Looking Up

I had to visit a couple of my customers yesterday and one of them offered me the job of a project controller!! Hmmm, I've always said that I would rather plant trees for the government than work for them again. I wasn't happy with the way I was treated before although this would be an office job, not that of a pleb on the floor.

How Rude

As I mentioned the other day one of our sales reps finished up. We had the farewell speech and he was presented with a gift by the company and the guys in Systems Sales gave him a bottle of Chivas Regal 12 years old Scotch Whisky. I've had it for seven years since buying a shaver and it was a good chance to get rid of it. Getting paid to give it away was a bonus.

Instead of the usual stand in the front of the office and have a few beers we went to the pub. The guy leaving is well liked and I think it showed. I drove him home afterwards, no more company car for him, and was telling him how much I had learnt from him over the nearly two years I had been with the company when he cut me off and said, "I have to go inside. Goodbye."

How rude. Did he think that I was just crapping on and pissing in his pocket or was it that his time with our company was up and he no longer had to care about any of his former workmates? I was most annoyed but don't worry as I'll soon get over it. I'm not looking for sympathy here.

Sage Advice

For those of you that read blogs I have found a useful tool called Sage. It is a small plug-in for Mozilla Firefox browser and allows you to add RSS links from news sites or blogs. The display of the sites is quite nice, if a little featureless, but that is the whole point. If you wish to remove the advertising and links and just read the content then it makes a lot of sense to have this plug-in.