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Farts Like Gold: 33 - Beer or Bailey's
Farts Like Gold: 32 - Lucy Gets Dressed
Fast Cars, Naked Women, and Golf
Farts Like Gold: 31 - bell bottoms
June 25, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 34 - Road Trips
"Road trips," said Tony. "They're great, aren't they? It seems we're always on a road trip together. First the bus, now this. Even that night in the bar was like a road trip. It was like a musical journey of the soul."
I nodded. We had been on the road for about two hours. We still had another four to go to where we were supposed to meet Franklin.
"And we didn't even stop to pee," added Tony.
I thought about it for a moment. "True," I said.
"Although you did spit beer all over the floor," said Tony.
"It was coffee," I said. "It was hot."
"Right... right..." he said. "Because of the narcolepsy."
"What narcolepsy?"
"You were drinking coffee because you were narcoleptic. Remember? You kept falling asleep on the bus."
"I was drinking coffee because I was doped up on painkillers," I said.
"Oh come on," said Tony. "The coffee wasn't that hot."
I held up my right hand. "Broken hand," I said. "That's how we met in the first place. I broke my hand."
"Oh right," he said. "I met another guy with a broken hand once. His name was Alvin. He worked in a circus. I met him on the bus too."
I slumped down a bit on my side of the seat. The road ahead of us was empty. If only there was some oncoming traffic I could end this right now. "Maybe you should tell me about your bass again," I said. There was a bag of assorted junk food between us. "Better yet, give me a Pringle. You've got two good hands and I'm driving."
"Okay." Tony opened a can of Pringles. He handed me a small stack of them. I braced the steering wheel with my right forearm and took the chips with my left hand. I placed one on my tongue and balanced the rest of the stack on my left thigh.
Tony put the can of Pringles carefully back in the plastic shopping bag and tied the top of the bag in a loose bow.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"What?"
"Tie the top of the bag like that?"
"Well, what if you have to brake suddenly, or we hit a moose? The Pringles and the Pepsi and the cheese balls would all go flying. It would be a mess. You don't want cheese balls all over the inside of the truck." Tony paused for a moment. "Although they do kind of match the paint. I wonder if you could make a kind of paste out of cheese balls and cover up some of the scratches on the side. This truck could use some detailing."
"What if I want more Pringles?" I said. "And if we hit a moose, I guarantee the inside of a truck will be a mess anyway." I popped another one of the Pringles in my mouth.
"Well, it will be less of a mess," said Tony. "It's an imperfect world. The best that we can do is to do the best we can. Even if the truck is slightly less of a mess when we hit that moose, the world will be a better place than if I hadn't tied that knot." He picked up the bag, gave one end of the bow a yank and it came untied. "And it's easy enough to open again. Want some more Pringles?"
"No thanks," I said.
Tony tied the bag up again and put it on the seat between us. "It would probably wash off right away," he said.
"What?"
"The cheese ball paste. Unless we missed it with some kind of glue or something. Some chemical that wasn't water soluble. Maybe we could somehow harvest the orange dust from the outside of the cheese balls and mix it with some epoxy or something."
"Or instead of cheese balls and epoxy, we could just buy some orange paint," I said.
"Yes," said Tony. "That would work. But right now we don't have any orange paint but we do have cheese balls and epoxy."
"We have epoxy?"
"It's in the glove compartment. I noticed it earlier," said Tony. He opened the glove compartment and showed it to me. "We don't have orange paint but we do have cheese balls and epoxy. I like to solve problems with what I have on hand rather than, you know, dreaming of a perfect world."
"Do you mean that perfect world that has orange paint?" I said. "Tony, I don't want you to get too excited, but I think we may be living in that perfect world. Maybe things aren't as bad as you think. Maybe you didn't need to tie that bag up. Maybe we won't hit that moose after all."
"Don't get me wrong," he said. "I'm not suggesting we stop the truck now and mix up a paste of cheese balls and epoxy. For one thing, what if we get hungry later? It's probably far more important that we have some food on hand than to spruce up the truck. I mean, you're the bush man and all, but surely we should keep some emergency food with us at all times in case something happens." Tony undid the knot on the bag and peered inside it. He tied it back up again. "Still, it would be nice to clean up the truck a bit. Not with cheese balls or anything, but maybe just some soap and water."
Posted by YandaMan at 11:15 PM
June 18, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 33 - Beer or Bailey's
"Beer or Baileys?" asked Cassandra. She held out a can of Budweiser in one hand a bottle of Baileys in the other.
"Think I'll start with beer," said Lucy. She took the can from Cassie and popped the tab. It foamed briefly and she put her mouth over the top of the can. She leaned forward so most of the beer went into her mouth or onto her floor of the bus.
"Good work!" said Amber. "Save the skirt!"
"Nice skirt," said April.
"Well, it's actually a dress, but I'm cold," said Lucy. "You guys look great, though!"
"Let's see the full effect," said Amber. "Take the fleece off for a second."
"Maybe in a bit."
"I'll turn the oven back on," said April.
"Do you want something to eat?" asked Cassandra. "I'll get you a plate of lasagne if you want."
"I'll get it," said Lucy.
"No," said Cassandra. "It's no trouble. I should check what's going on out there anyway." She walked down the steps into the dining tent.
"Show us the dress," said April.
"Okay," said Lucy. She took off her fleece and put it beside her on the freezer. She hopped down. She gave a little twirl, then curtsied.
"That's gorgeous," said Amber.
"In a kind of Beverly Hill Billies kind of way," said April. "I can see why you need the fleece."
"I think it's fantastic!" said Amber. "Where did you find it?"
Down in the dining tent, the party was in full swing now. Cassandra put some lasagne on a plate. The garlic bread was gone now. She noticed that Joe and Brendan had moved from beside the wood stove. She could just make them out through the crowd at the office table at the back of the tent. They were looking at maps.
One of the lasagne pans was empty. Cassandra took it and the plate she had just prepared up to the cookbus. Lucy took the plate and hopped up on the counter.
"Thanks," she said.
"Nice dress," said Cassandra. She put the empty pan across the sink and ran some water into it.
"It's Value Village," said Lucy.
"They always have the best stuff," said Amber. She was wearing a long red sheath dress with long white gloves that came up past her elbows. "If you ever need a ballgown for under ten bucks, Value Village is the place to find it."
"True," said April. "It's where I shop for almost all of my formal wear for the bush. Which, I guess, really, is all my formal wear."
Lucy stood up. "I think I'm going to go eat at a table. Thanks for the beer."
Cassandra took a drag of her cigarette. "No problem," she said.
Lucy walked down the steps into the dining tent. Cassandra watched as she made her way through the crowd to the office table in back. Brendan looked up as Lucy sat next to him.
April touched Cassandra on the knee. "We should make some popcorn," she said. "We've got 2 kilos of the stuff. It's good party food."
Cassandra put out her cigarette in the can she used as an ashtray. "Sure," she said. "Popcorn. Pop, pop, popcorn. Always a hit."
Posted by YandaMan at 11:26 PM
June 11, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 32 - Lucy Gets Dressed
Lucy took off the helmet she'd borrowed from Brendan. She put the gloves inside it and balanced it on one of the equipment boxes. There was a line of planters waiting for the shower. They passed a joint around. Someone offered it to her. She took a drag and passed it back to the next person in the line.
None of the women in camp were in the line waiting for the shower. Lucy stayed by the stove for a while to warm up then went back out into the rain and walked to her tent. She knelt under the tarp and took off her rain gear and her top. She zipped open her tent, swivelled around and sat down inside it as she pulled her trousers down. She kicked off her rubber boots. Both her socks came off with them. All of her clothes were soaked, including her underwear. It was a struggle to get her sports bra off. She left all of her wet clothes in a pile outside the tent. She grabbed a mostly clean tee shirt and scrubbed herself as clean as possible with it. She was shivering now. She pulled on a pair of clean panties, a pair of men's long underwear, and a tee shirt. She squirmed her way into her sleeping bag and worked her legs up and down inside the bag to generate some heat.
When she was warm enough she sat up in the tent and dug through her pack until she found the dress she'd been saving for the gown-plant. It was a shoulderless red-checked gingham dress. She took off the tee shirt. She pulled the dress over her head. Then she put the tee shirt back on overtop of it along with a polar fleece jacket.
Still half in the sleeping bag, she unzipped the door of her tent and poured the water out of her boots. She grimaced and wiped the mud off of her hands on a patch of moss near the door. She climbed out of the sleeping bag and put on two pairs of dirty but clean socks. She used a dirty tee shirt to dry out the insides of her boots as much as possible and then pulled them on. She squatted outside her tent and zipped the door closed.
She pulled her raincoat around her shoulders and flipped the hood over her head. She made her way as quickly as she could to the cookbus.
She opened the door at the front of the bus and walked up the steps. April and Cassie were inside talking to Amber. Lucy took off her raincoat and hung it on the railing by the door.
Amber saw her and let out a whoop. "Hey! Hey!" she said. "It's a hen party!"
Posted by YandaMan at 11:25 PM
June 10, 2006
Fast Cars, Naked Women, and Golf
(More pics of Fast Cars at Silverstone)
I think I've been suffering from an overdose of testosterone.
Whatever the excuse, I have been a very bad boy lately. It all started with that most he-manly of sports - Golf. The vice involved here was that of freebie-gluttony. Or, possibly, skiving-off-workity.
A few weeks ago I was invited to an awayday organised by one of our sometime suppliers to discuss the Mobile Phone industry with like-minded types such as myself from organisations like Reuters and Channel 4. Which is fine. It's my job to keep my ear to the ground and engage with the industry and yada yada yada. So far, so good. Nothing morally suspect here.
But then the agenda came:
- Item 1: Eat breakfast
- Item 2: Play 18 holes of golf at a posh country club near Surrey
- Item 3: Eat Lunch (drink wine)
- Item 4: Put the world to rights
- Item 5: Drink booze
Now, a right-thinking man with a proper puritan work ethic would have said, "No! Get thee behind me, Satan of little white balls and green fields!"
But instead, I thought, "Oooh, I've never played golf in this country! And really it would do me good to make connections with Whatshisbutt from Reuters and ThatDude from Channel 4."
I fooled no one. Certainly not myself. And so I ate breakfast and played golf and ate lunch and put the world to rights.
In my defence I will say that I drank very little booze, but that was because I had to rush back in order to hang out with Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman.
A wonderfully strange and bureaucratic miracle happened at work. The local council suddenly decided that Television Centre needed a license in order to perform live music in front of any members of the public (as they had been doing for the past forty years). This meant no members of the public at the tapings of any TV shows that had such performances. Which meant that we, the corporation's loyal workers, had to fill in. Which meant that I got to go to a taping of the Jonathan Ross show and sit scant metres from Halle Berry's very lovely cleavage and Hugh Jackman's relentless manliness.
I suspect this event, preceded as it was by the golf, increased testosterone production in my system to the extent that when faced with yet another despicable temptation, I caved in almost immediately.
This one was completely non-work-related. An earlier brush with supermodel glamour many moons ago had the side-effect of getting my name on the mailing list of a guy who organises Z-list celebrity party events in London. Most of these invitations I ignore but the day that my crazy landlord left the country I got an email inviting to me to the grand opening of Stringfellows Soho with free champagne and canapés and nekkid ladies. He would have wanted me to go.
I had never been to such a place before, but the original Stringfellows is an institution amongst lap-dancing clubs world-wide, and, really, one should try everything at least once. And so, after a brief struggle with my conscience and after getting approval from the long-suffering spouse who was up in Walsall that day, I called my friend James.
We attended the event. It was a fascinating experience. There were, indeed nekkid ladies. And many eastend gangster types with shaved heads and bulging suits and fat cigars. And, somewhat surprisingly, many women as invited guests as well. Oh, and one truly magnificent, rather corpulent, drag queen in a diagonally zebra striped mu-mu and turban.
Afterwards I felt dirty and guilty. At the time though, I felt... (Well I didn't feel quite what I wanted to. It wasn't allowed.) But I did feel happy. Lustful wouldn't be quite the right term, but after a bit of free champagne and one expensive beer, I have to admit I had a stupid grin on my face. I'm not sure why, but a naked woman gyrating in my face produces an emotion in my brain a little bit like glee.
That said, it's a bad thing to objectify woman and I shouldn't have gone and I am a bad bad man!
Whoops.
And then today I did something even worse. But this time it was Vicki's fault. Rather than glorifying the objectification of women, we glorified the automobile. I would argue the effect on global warming of nekkid ladies is not severe. If you think about it, less energy is needed to produce clothes for nekkid ladies than for clothed ladies.
Race Cars, though, are definitely bad for the environment. Racing glorifies the automobile and encourages boys to think they need a really expensive and powerful car in order to be a man. This leads them to roaring about polluting the planet and driving so fast they don't see the blind arthritic nun crossing the road and "SPLAT!" - Rosary beads everywhere.
That said, race cars are pretty cool and they kind of hit the same glee button that nekkid ladies do.
My friend James has a sister (and so should be terribly ashamed about accompanying me to Stringfellows). This sister works for a hospitality company and had some half price VIP passes to Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. My charming spouse is a huge fan of formula one and we had many times talked about going. And so this was too good an offer to pass up.
We went today for qualifying and it was fantastic. It was like someone had put a brick down on my glee button. The best part was the race involving the historic sports cars. These were fantastic. The VIP passes meant we were allowed to wander past the garages for these cars and they were very very cool. They were all from the 1960s and early '70s. And now I desperately need one if I am to think of myself as a proper man.
Ah, you see! Some good did come from all this evil! My eyes have been opened to the benefits of recycling! It's not really wasteful if I buy a hideously overpowered and expensive sports car from the '60s. By doing so enormous amounts of energy will be saved that would have otherwise gone into the creation of the new fuel efficient car I would have otherwise bought.
I am a good person. Really, I am.
Posted by YandaMan at 11:12 PM | Comments (1)
June 4, 2006
Farts Like Gold: 31 - bell bottoms
"Bell bottoms!" shouted the ghetto blaster.
"Bell bottoms!" shouted Kathy.
"Bell Captains!" shouted Matt.
Cassandra spotted Brendan and Joe. She put a couple of helpings of lasagne on a couple of plates. She added slices of garlic bread and squeezed her way through the dancers to the lunch table. She added some Caesar salad to each plate. Matt jostled her.
"Sorry," he said.
"No problem," she said. She turned around and danced briefly with the group.
She turned back to the table and picked up the plates. She weaved her way through the dancers and brought the plates over to the table they were sitting at.
"Want some grub?" she asked.
"Thanks," said Joe.
"You are the finest human being I have ever known," said Brendan.
Cassandra wiped her hands on her apron. She picked a crouton off of Brendan's plate and popped in her mouth. "Nah," she said. "I'm only the second finest human being you know." She turned around and danced back to the kitchen through the group in front of lunch table.
Joe looked at Brendan. "Who do you think is number one?"
Brendan was chewing on a piece of garlic bread. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well, if you're the second, who do you think is the first?"
Brendan took a sip of his scotch. "Probably you, I guess. Or maybe April. Or Mother Theresa. Or Sarah McLachlan. She likes Sarah McLachlan a lot. Who do you think it is?"
"Lucy?"
Brendan shook his head. "Lucy may be many things, but I suspect there are finer human beings out there." He swivelled around to face the table and give proper attention to his meal. Joe put his plate on the table as well and turned to face him.
"She's a nice girl, that Lucy," he said.
Brendan sliced off a corner of his lasagne. "She's too good looking," he said. "That's never a good thing." He put the corner of lasagne in his mouth.
"Doesn't have to be," said Joe.
Brendan chewed his lasagne. He pushed the bottle of scotch forward and swallowed his lasagne. "Have another drink," he said.
Posted by YandaMan at 11:59 PM