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January 29, 2006

Farts Like Gold: 13

Brendan stepped off the stump on to a log. He walked along it for a few metres then hopped off on to the ground and headed back to the quad.

Lucy, Alistair, and Cameron kept planting

It was Friday night and I was in the the Commercial Hotel. I walked up to the bar and looked around as I waited to be served. I suddenly realised I hadn't phoned anyone in town yet. I'd been here for two days and hadn't tried to get in touch with anyone. I looked around the bar. If anyone I knew was in town there was a good chance they'd show up here. I wasn't sure whether I was hoping to spot someone I knew or just the opposite.

It was fairly early still, about eight o'clock. The band hadn't started playing yet. Both pool tables were busy but there were no coins on the edge of the table. The Commercial swings between biker-bar, student bar, business-suit bar, and neighbourhood pub depending on the season, time of day, and phase of the moon. It hadn't quite figured out what it was going to be tonight. Or, at least, I couldn't tell.

The bartender came over and stood in front of me across the bar. He had long hair and a beard with one long thin braid dripping down from his chin.

"Can I get a pitcher of Traditional and a glass, please?" I said.

He nodded, put a glass in front of me, and poured the pitcher. I gave him a twenty dollar bill and he brought back a five and four loonies. I left one of the loonies on the bar, put the other three in my pocket and the fivespot in my wallet. I tucked the glass under my right armpit and carried the pitcher over to an empty table with a view of the door and the stage.

I felt unsettled. My hand hurt and my body was wondering why it hadn't been planting trees for the last couple of days. My metabolism was still racing but my body hadn't had much to do except heal my broken hand. I was antsy. I took a couple of percocet and washed them down with beer.

I sat there and stared at the pitcher in front of me. It might be a bad idea to drink this much beer while popping serious pain killers, I thought to myself. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later I was feeling seriously drunk. This was a bad sign considering I'd only had one glass so far. If Tony didn't show up I could be in trouble. At least my hand didn't hurt any more.

I lurched to my feet and went to the bar.

"Two coffees please, with milk and sugar," I said. I decided the milk and sugar might help as well. Calorie consumption is key when you're trying to avoid getting completely plastered.

The bartender put the coffees on a tray and put the tray on the bar in front of me.

"Who's your invisible friend?" he asked.

"What?" I asked.

"He nodded at the two coffees and then at my table with the almost full pitcher of beer.

"Oh, both the coffees are for me," I said. "But I am planning to share the pitcher."

He nodded. "Want another glass, then?"

"No thanks," I said. "He might not show up."

I grabbed the tray with my left hand and balanced it with my right arm. It took definite focus to make it to the table without getting sidetracked.

I drank the two coffees sitting at my table, staring intensely at the door. If Tony didn't show up I was going to have to drink this pitcher by myself. It might not be the best of ideas, but a man's got an obligation when he buys a pitcher of beer.

Tony showed up when I was about half way into my third glass of beer. I waved as he walked past the pool tables and held the pitcher aloft. It felt surprisingly light.

Tony waved back, but instead of coming straight to the table he stopped at the bar. I was distracted by the lightness of the pitcher so it took me a couple of minutes to realise what he was up to. I put the foolishly light pitcher down on the table and ran to the bar. I was too late to prevent him from asking for another pitcher but I wasn't too late to add a couple of coffees to the order.

"Two coffees?" Tony asked.

"I just don't want to be inattentive," I said.

"Yeah, you nodded off a bit on the bus, now that you mention it," he said. "Maybe you have narcolepsy. I worked with a guy who had that. He used to fall asleep in meetings all the time when I was talking to him."

"No," I said. "It's not that. It's the drugs. I took a couple of painkillers and the beer was making me dozy."

"Well, good to see you," he said. "How's your hand? I see you still don't have a cast. Maybe it wasn't really broken. Men have a much lower pain tolerance than women."

"No," I said. "It's definitely broken. Should we sit down?"

I tucked Tony's glass under my armpit and carried the pitcher back to the table. He brought my coffees over. Without thinking about it, I filled both of our glasses from his pitcher and took a drink.

"I thought you were going to have coffee," he said.

"Oh shit!" I said. I took a big slurp from one of the coffees. It was hot. I turned to the side and spewed the coffee out on the carpet, then drained my beer. "Ah, fuck it!" I said. Must not panic. Keep things simple, that's the key.

"You are one entertaining guy," said Tony. "You should be in the circus."

One of the bouncers came over to our table and looked us up and down. I smiled and tried not to vibrate or lurch.

"The coffee was hot," Tony said. "He has a broken hand."

The bouncer took a step closer.

"I think he has narcolepsy," added Tony.

The bouncer looked at Tony. He looked at me. I smiled.

"Just don't spit anything else on the floor," the bouncer said. He walked back to his position by the door.

>> Farts Like Gold: 14

Posted by YandaMan at 10:40 PM

January 24, 2006

Getting video onto a PSP

I’ve been playing around a bit with a borrowed PSP (Playstation Portable) trying to get video recorded with MCE (Media Center Edition of Microsoft XP) to play on it. It took me a while to figure out that the key thing is the naming convention. And now I’m having a mental google-block and can’t find where I found it out. So I thought I’d stick this up here. Apologies if it’s a bit off-piste for this normally useless blog.

To get video onto a PSP (Playstation Portable):
1. The file has to be in MPEG-4 format or Sony’s AVC format
2. If it’s in MPEG-4, it has to be put on the memory stick in a directory named /MP_ROOT/100MNV01. The file itself has to be named M4V****.MP4, where * is any digit from 0-9. Note: there needs to be four digits.
3. If it’s in AVC format, it has to be put on the memory stick in a directory named /MP_ROOT/100ANV01. The file itself has to be named MAQ****.MP4, where * is any digit from 0-9. Note: there needs to be four digits.
4. Oh, and by the way, you’ll need a tool to convert your MCE (dvr-ms) files to MP4. Personally I use Nero which is a commercial product, but there are others.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled silliness…

Posted by YandaMan at 10:54 PM

January 22, 2006

Farts Like Gold: 12

They caught up with the boys near the back of their land.

"How's it going, fellahs?" said Brendan.

Cameron was planting along the treeline. He just glanced over to Brendan and nodded, and kept planting.

Alistair stopped and drank from a water bottle he pulled out of his back bag. "It's not a bad day. It ain't cake, but it ain't bad," he said.

Brendan smiled. "Sweet!" he said. "I'm always happy when people have good land." He tossed his shovel a few metres behind the group. It made a couple of lazy circles in the air and thunked into the ground blade-first.

"I didn't say it was good land." Alistair put the bottle back in his back bag and slipped a tree in between the roots of a stump.

"If it ain't bad, it's good," said Brendan. He stomped on his shovel to stick it firmly in the ground. He put the loop of his checking cord around it. He stretched the cord out and walked in a slow circle around the shovel, dropping a little piece of pink flagging every time he spotted a planted tree.

The other three kept planting.

Brendan checked each tree carefully. He talked to himself and to the trees as he checked them. "How are ya doing, little fellah? You're a nice looking little sprucey. How's your friend here? Oh, she's not looking perfect. Bit of a leaner. I think one of those bad boys stomped a bit too hard on you. They're bad boys, aren't they?"

When he was done, he sat down on a stump and wrote up the plot in a notebook he pulled from his inside vest pocket. By the time he was done, the three planters had turned around at the back of the land and were almost abreast of him again. Brendan stood up on the stump.

"Not bad," he said. "Good spacing. Eight trees. One leaner. Cameron, I think you might be kicking a bit too close sometimes. I'll check some more on the way back. In general, it looks pretty good, though."

>> Farts Like Gold: 13

Posted by YandaMan at 10:43 PM

January 17, 2006

Nose Hair Trimming

I have entered new realms of personal weirdness thanks to the aging process and an urge to mate with the opposite gender -- in this case, my wife.

She has complained for a while now that hair has begun to sprout from various orifices in a way she considers unseemly. Personally, I see this as just part of the overall package that is me. Surely she must love my whole -- my brawny thighs, my winning smile, my raging tumescent manhood, and my nosehair.

But, apparently not.

It started with my eyebrows about a year ago. In preparation for my 40th birthday she coerced me into getting my eyebrows trimmed while getting my semi-annual haircut. When I say "trimmed", I mean "waxed". An otherwise pleasant young woman applied hot wax to the area immediately above my eyes and then ripped it off with what I like to think of as "the cloth of sadism". Then she attacked me with a pair of tweezers. I now know why they no longer allow these weapons on airliners.

My wife was pleased with the result for awhile. But then she noticed other facets of my appearance in need of cosmetic surgery. E.g. the luxuriant hair flowing from my proboscis and the winningly eccentric tufts portruding from my ears. I fought against this affront to my vanity for many many months.

But then, at Christmas, I received a gift from my crazy landlord. My charming spouse beamed as I held it in my hands. When I opened it she clapped her hands with glee. It was an electric nose hair trimmer.

For the last three weeks I've been using the excuse that it was important to make sure it was fully charged before I switched it on lest I damage the battery. Tonight, though, I bowed to pressure and fired up the infernal device.

It is a odd feeling to take a madly vibrating phallus tipped with gnashing metal teeth and jam it up one's nose. It takes a certain amount of preparation and focus. It does not help to have one's spouse at one's side jumping up and down like a schoolgirl after her first double espresso. After several false starts and a great deal of foul language I forced her out of the bathroom and bolted the door. A few minutes later the deed was done. I can only hope that the lack of protection those follicles would have afforded me won't shorten my lifespan too much.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:32 PM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2006

Farts Like Gold: 11

The quad kicked up a cloud of dust as Brendan and Lucy drove off. Kathy turned her face to the side. She and Amber followed the quad.

The planting bags meant that there wasn't much room on the seat for two people. Brendan rode standing up until they got to the end of the block. Lucy braced her hands on her thighs and moved forward and back as the quad went over bumps.

"Can you shove back at all, Lucy?" asked Brendan as they left the block and turned onto the cutline which joined it with the next one. "My legs are killing me."

Lucy pushed her feet against the pegs and forced herself back against the bags. Brendan sat down on the seat. Lucy reached up and grabbed hold of the Brendan's belt loops on either side of his waist. The quad trail down the cutline was smooth. Lucy rested her forehead against Brendan's back.

The first block they came to was finished and pretty much cleaned out. There were still some planters in the second block but Brendan noticed everyone was closing fast. He stood up as they drove through that block. Lucy continued to hold onto his belt loops. He sat down as the block turned to cutline, and then stood up as they went into the third block. He drove to the far edge of the block and stopped by a tree cache sheltered in the trees.

Alistair and Cameron were about 50 metres from the road following the treeline. Lucy watched as they bobbed up and down sticking trees in the ground. As the quad came to a stop, she pulled on Brendan's belt loops and stood up on the pegs behind him. Brendan braced himself with the handlebars as Lucy leaned into him and swung her leg over the seat. She grabbed one of the bungie cords on the back and leaned back with her full weight to unhook it. She pulled her planting bags off the pile and yanked her shovel out from beneath the others. She jammed her shovel in the ground, and took her planting bags to the tree cache. She reached under the tarp and dragged one of the boxes out with one hand. She knelt by the box, opened it up and began packing bundles of seedlings into her bags.

Brendan unhooked the bungies on the front of the quad and got out Lucy's daypack. He strapped Amber and Kathy's daypacks back in and then walked to the back of the quad. He pulled Lucy's water bottle off the pile and put it and her day pack by her shovel on the side of the road. He tied up the back rack and then walked to the side of the cache.

Lucy had finished bagging up. She shrugged to lift up her bags as she cinched the belt tight around her waist. Brendan picked up the empty box she'd left and broke it down as he stepped out of the forest into the block.

"Ready to meet your new partners." He said.

"You know me," Lucy said. "Always keen to make new friends."

Brendan headed off towards where Alistair and Cameron were planting. Lucy walked off at a slight angle, her eyes scanning the ground. Brendan looked back as he heard Lucy scuff the ground with her foot. He shook his head as she threw the shovel into the ground, bent over and slid a seedling into the cut the shovel made as she twisted it slightly and pulled it out.

Lucy stepped forward as she straightened, looking for the next place to plant a tree. "I'm not going to dead-walk all the way back there. We'll meet up when they're on the way back."

"You'll end up with a back wedge," Brendan said. "Plus I've got to go set up Kathy and Amber."

Lucy planted another tree. She looked up and smiled. "It'll go faster if you spot their line for me," she said. She bent over and planted another tree. "Besides, Amber and Kathy won't be at the cache yet. They're walking." She planted another tree.

Brendan laughed and walked a few feet ahead of Lucy and stood by one of the trees on the outside planting line left by Alistair or Cameron. He couldn't tell who was on the outside from where they were. "Well, plant fast," he said.

Lucy didn't say anything. She walked ahead three steps, kicked the duff away with her fourth step, and slammed her shovel into the ground. It didn't go in quite far enough so she stomped on the kickplate with her foot and bent over with a tree in her hand as her foot slid off the shovel. She slid the tree in along the shovel blade and moved on. Brendan kept pace with her, watching for Alistair and Cameron's trees as he walked. They went at a decent walking pace. Brendan kept moving, pointing out the trees. Lucy made quick strides between planting spots, pausing every three or four steps to clear a spot and stick a tree in the ground. Every now and then Brendan would dip down to check how well the trees were planted.

>> Farts Like Gold: 12

Posted by YandaMan at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)

January 14, 2006

Eye on Dalston

The height of the action	Live!

It's been a day of avoiding novel-writing. It's Saturday and the missus is up in Wolverhampton supporting her students' Dance show. A perfect opportunity for me to catch up on the great work, or so you would think.

But, sadly, it was not to be. I let myself be seduced by the vice of geekiness and spent the afternoon setting up a webcam. It's not the most beautiful or informative webcam in the world. Right now it's pointing at the street below my window. As soon as I started writing this I was rewarded by a small group of yoots getting into a disagreement across the street. I turned the camera to point at the disagreement and for a good five minutes or so there was some solid entertainment: Shouting. Posturing. Girlfriends pulling at the arms of testosterone-laden boyfriends...

And then police driving the wrong way down my one-way street. (They always do that, even when they're just going to Nando's for chicken.) And running and flashing blue lights and more shouting.

Hmm, perhaps it was more than a disagreement. There seem to be a lot of police. Can't see any bodies, though. I'll have to wait and see if any big yellow signs appear in the next couple of days. Ah... Life in the big city...

Posted by YandaMan at 5:19 PM

January 8, 2006

Farts Like Gold: 10 - Amber and Kathy

I ordered a coffee and watched all the clean and shiny people walk by. I idly reached into my pocket and pulled out the receipt for the jeans I had just bought. Fifty dollars was a lot of money when you no longer had a job. I wondered how long it would be before Workman's Comp kicked in. I was pretty sure I didn't have enough weeks for unemployment benefits yet.

But then my coffee arrived and a girl smiled at me as she walked by and it just didn't seem to matter anymore.

Brendan spotted Lucy, Amber, and Kathy sitting at the cache and rode over on his quad. The girls had broken down their boxes and were lying back in the sun. Kathy had rested her head on her water jug and had her feet up on a log by the cache. She wore orange rubber boots and two pairs of thick cotton tights with a torn flouncy mini skirt that had once been bright ladybug red.

"...looking for the love getaway..." she sang.

Lucy and Amber lay on the pile of flattened boxes with their knees up. Amber got to her feet as Brendan pulled up on the quad.

"You lovely ladies done?" he asked. He looked around the cache. Trees had been planted exactly the minimum distance apart all around the edges of the cache and up and down the road. "I'm guessing you managed to bag out all right."

"Lucy helped us out," she said. "We never would have bagged out if it wasn't for her." Lucy smiled.

Kathy waved her arms back and forth above her chest "...the love shack is a little old place where we can get to-gether..." she sang.

Brendan got off the quad and pulled their three shovels from the ground and lay them on the back rack of the quad. He picked up Kathy's plantings bags from beside her. He put them on the back on top of the shovels, then added Lucy and Amber's bags. He piled their water bottles on top of them and strapped the unwieldy pile down with three bungee cords. When he grabbed Kathy's water bottle, she raised her head up and then let it fall on the ground behind her.

Lucy stood up. She walked over to the front of the quad and put her day pack on the front rack. Amber did the same. Kathy turned her head to the side and watched all this from the ground. She reached beside her and grabbed her day pack with one hand. She threw it awkwardly to Amber. Amber caught it and put it on the front rack and strapped it down. "Where are we off to?" she asked.

"Not far," said Brendan. "Two or three bends."

"It's too bad you don't have a Chrysler as big as a whale," said Kathy. She got to her feet as Brendan pulled a map out of the inside left pocket of his vest. He unfolded the map on the seat of the quad. The girls crowded around him.

"Just walk down this road." He pointed back the way he had come. "go straight through the next two blocks and stop at the second cache. I'll meet you there and set you up. Lucy you're going a bit further. I'm going to put you in with Alistair and Cameron."

Lucy nodded and started walking. Amber and Kathy followed. Brendan rode past them on the quad and pulled up beside Lucy.

"Actually, I might as well run you down now and double back to meet the girls. Do you want a ride?" he asked.

"Thanks." Brendan stood up and leaned forward over the handlebars. Lucy stepped on one of the pegs, grabbed the armpit of his vest with one hand and stepped between Brendan and the pile of bags and water bottles to sit on the quad.

Brendan turned around to Amber and Kathy. "Sorry girls," he said, "I've only got room for one."

"Should have got a Chrysler," said Kathy.

>> Farts Like Gold: 11

Posted by YandaMan at 11:35 PM

January 1, 2006

Farts Like Gold: 9 -- Shopping for Jeans

I woke up once during the night and took another percocet. I didn't get out of bed until noon. The first thing I did was to take another bath. After that I spent a good fifteen minutes shaving with my left hand. It was surprisingly easy if I just took it slow. It felt a little awkward but somehow it was calming just to concentrate on the simple motions needed.

I had clean underwear and socks and a clean tee shirt but that was it. My jeans, in particular were filthy. I tidied up all my stuff and went downstairs.

"Morning," I said to the guy at the desk.

"Morning," he replied.

"I'd like to keep the room until at least Saturday, if that's okay," I said.

"No problem."

It was bright outside and warm enough for me to take my jacket off. The traffic and the crowds of people were a bit of a shock. I couldn't get over how shiny everyone looked. All of the woman looked absolutely beautiful. A woman walked by in a purple skirt with bare legs. They gleamed like pink stainless steel. I shook my head and tried to concentrate on the cars driving by. There was a red Volkswagon Golf and a blue Honda Civic. They were shiny as well and very small.

I had breakfast in Uncle Albert's - pancakes, bacon and eggs, toast, and hash browns with coffee and orange juice.

I crossed the street and looked for a new pair of jeans at Army and Navy. They were all a bit too cheap and crap looking though. I felt I needed a bit of a splurge. I checked out a couple more stores and ended up buying a pair of black Levi's at Divine Decadance for $50. I put it on the visa.

"Actually, do you mind if I change into them here and wear them out?" I asked the girl behind the desk.

"No problem," she said. She was pulled the jeans out of the bag she had just put them in and cut the tags off with a pair of orange-handled scissors.

"Thanks," I said. I went into the changing room and emptied the pockets of my old jeans onto the chair: wallet, swiss army knife, lighter, room key, and a few twigs and bits of moss. I took off my old jeans, gave my thighs and calves a good long scratch, then put on my new black jeans. They felt and smelled great. I put everything from the chair but the twigs and moss into my pockets and flung open the curtain of the changing room with a fourish.

The girl behind the counter looked a bit startled but then smiled. She gave me a bag for my old jeans and I went out onto the street.

I wandered around a bit, soaking up the sunshine until I found a quiet coffee shop with an empty table on the sidewalk.

>> Farts Like Gold: 10

Posted by YandaMan at 11:20 PM