Aussie McBlog

Tales from Down Under

Highlights from


I'm not finished it yet, but I find it highly amusing...

ON TRAVELING

At some unfortunate point, quite early on, jet lag asserted itself and I slumped helplessly into a coma. I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod of look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come hither manner; my knuckles brush the floor. Whatever is inside--tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air--decides to leak out. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen an, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers' hems. It is a terrible burden to bear.

ON HERITAGE

When Australians get hold of a name that suits them they tend to stick with it in a big way. We can blame this unfortunate custom on Lachlan Macquarie, a Scotsman who was governor of the colony in the first part of the nineteenth centurty... You really cannot move in Australia without bumping into some reminder of his tenure. Run your eye over the map and you will find a Macquarie Harbour, Macquarie Island, Macquarie Marsh, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Plains, Lake Macquarie, Port Macquarie, Mrs.Macquarie's Chair (a lookout point over Sydney Harbour), Macquarie's Point, and a Macquarie town. I always imagine him sitting at this desk, poring over maps and charts with a magnifying glass, and calling out from time to time to his first assistant, "Hae we no' got a Macquarie Swamp yet, laddie? And look here at this wee copse. It has nae name. What shall we call it, do ye think?"

ON CANBERRA NIGHTLIFE (or lack thereof)

I think the last beer might have been a mistake because I don't remember much after that other than a sensation of supreme goodwill toward anyone who passed through the room, including a Filipina who came in with a vacuum cleaner and asked me to lift my legs so that she could clean under my chair. My notes for the evening show only two other entries, both in a slightly unsteady hand. One says, "Victoria Bitter--why called??? Not bitter at all But quite nice!!!" The other said, "I tell you, Barry, he was farting sparks!" I believe this was in reference to a colorful Aussie turn of phrase I overheard from the people at the next table rather than to any actual manifestation of flatulence of an electrical nature. But I could be wrong. I'd had a few.

ON POLITICS

In his book Among the Barbarians, the Australian writer Paul Sheehan records an exchange in Parliament between a man named Wilson Tuckey and the then prime minister, Paul Keating, of which the following is a small part:
Tuckey: You are an idiot. You are just a hopeless nong...
Keating: Shut up! Sit down and shut up, you pig... Why do you not shut up, you clown?... This man has a criminal intellect... this clown continues to interject in perpetuity.
This was actually a fairly tame exchange... gracing the pages of whatever is the Australian equivalent of the Congressional Record, have been scumbags, pieces of criminal garbage, sleazebags, stupid foul-mouthed grubs, piss-ants, mangy maggot, perfumed gigolos, gutless spivs, boxheads, immoral cheats, and stunned mullets.

ON THE SPORT OF CHOICE... CRICKET

Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcherand walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattresses strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, he does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a misstroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and everyone retires happily to a distant pavillion to fortify for the next siege.

ON WILDLIFE

Flies are of course always irksome, but the Australian variety distinguishes itself with its very particular persistence. If an Australian fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging him. Flick at him as you will and each time he will jump out of range and come straight back. It is simply not possible to deter him. Somewhere on an exposed portion of your body is a spot, about the size of a shirt button, that the fly wants to lick and tickle and turn delirious circles upon. It isn't simply their persistence, but the things they go for. An Australian fly will try to suck the moisture off your eyeball. He will, if not constantly turned back, go into parts of your ears that a Q-tip can only dream about. He will happily die for the glory of taking a tiny dump on your tongue. Get thirty or forty of them dancing around you in the same way and madness will shortly follow.

Hehehe. It's a good read.

posted by Sara @ 11:17 AM