2192 lines
114 KiB
Plaintext
2192 lines
114 KiB
Plaintext
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File: fools.txt
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Content: it's april 2004. This is my remaining life. Bored yet?
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Maybe you read this 'cos of morbid curiosity. Or maybe you're just into
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the juicy goss I put in. I dunno. Anyway. It gratifies my ego, I like
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having an audience which at least feigns interest (conway's apache logs
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indicate that people download the stuff, but not that they bother to read
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it). I even get feedback from time to time. Thanks for that too. It
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encourages me to write more drool.
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-------
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April 1 or so.
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Legal aid reckon the magistrate'll either throw this case out with no
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conviction recorded or gimme a little fine and in any case its nothing to
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worry about very much. In the former case, it sucks in some sense that
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I'll finally be recorded in the immortal literature as a crim. In
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perspective, well, no shit, Sherlock. You wouldn't worry about a fine for
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tresso' when you've been tried and found wanting in the high court of
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cellular biology, where juries, judges and justice hold no jurisdiction
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and a misplaced base pair will dig your grave for you. But it's still a
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fuckin' nuisance. I'm gonna have to iron a shirt and say Your Worship (not
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my worship... if some git wants to tell me that I think he worships
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himself, that's just fine with me).
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It's years since i updated my CV and I kinda wouldn't be bothered unless
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it might save me a few hundred bux in fines. Updating it was kind of
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funny. The condensed, abridged, compressed, distilled summary of my life
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fits, embarassingly, in a single page. Which in some senses is an
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indictment in itself. But I did leave out a lot of stuff. I never really
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gave a shit about CV enhancement, character refs and so on since I
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concluded years ago CV's were so easily faked and were so... well,
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self-aggrandising. And you learn shit-all from a CV compared to what you
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learn from interacting with a person. Which is more interesting anyway.
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I had a strange dream. Joss fed her hand, palm-up, <sploof> into my chest
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under my left costal margin, under the rib, above the lung, the heart, and
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popped it out again and (borrowing from Dave Goldstein a word which rolls
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ever so delightfully off the tongue) _supraclavicularly_ curled her
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fingers around that beautifully sculpted osseous strut extending from my
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neck to my shoulder. I watched the fingers close around it. Which should
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be impossible, I can't really see it from where my eyeballs are. No blood.
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Stuck in me, up to the elbow, the dream ended. Beats the shit out of me
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what this means, or even if it should mean anything. I have rivers of
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random crap floating through my head when I dream and most of it makes no
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sense.
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Tools for the job.
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I accidentally busted the aerial off my ghastly Nokia wankerfone today and
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found that an 8mm dia, 316 stainless 30mm hex bolt works pretty well as a
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substitute though seems to work better when the 'fone's horizontal. I
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dunno what its vSWR is but it can't be too bad. I remember the usual fix
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to the broken-off aerial on the car bonnet was an inverted coathanger
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stuck in the feed hole, and this is its cellphone equivalent. You read it
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here first. Stand by. Someone will patent nuts and bolts.
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The South African shagged me and fed me a huge slice of fried dead cow arse on
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thursday and I later popped around to Toad Hall and found I couldn't fix
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the brakes on Joss' bike 'cos there was a warped rim due to a missing
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spoke which I didn't spot before. Fucked if I can find my spoke key. So
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Joss isn't gonna ride with us on Sunday but maybe she wasn't up for the
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ride anyway. She has an Allen key now, with which to tweak her own bike. I
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know not of her inclination to use it.
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It's April 3. Bill is rigid today. Hard, pressurised. Bill's size and
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texture varies. My sister turns 31 tomorrow and I am not gonna go to the
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dinner. Unless it rains in which case I'm not riding the push bike in it.
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Joss appears to be way more stressed up than I thought. She worries me,
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but I can't stop her worrying about all the stuff she apparently worries
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about. I read her stuff when she offers it to me 'cos she has the guts to
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print it out but otherwise I feel a bit ignorant about what's stewing in
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her head and have trepidation about asking her. Please don't get
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continuously smashed and become slurred, insensate, incommuncado like my
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mum used to do, I want to suggest as gently as one could possibly suggest
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it, but I have to trust her not to, and I will have no reproach for her if
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she does - there's nothin' I can do about it 'cept watch. I'm glad she's
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having at least some good fun, tho, in Cremmo she's found a seriously well
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hung dude and loves it. The normal reaction you get from blokes about the
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discovery that one of their favourite shags has found someone more amply
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equipped than themselves is envy, but I reckon it's cool if they both have
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a great time and anyway, since the advent of injection-moulded silicone,
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size competitions have become sorta irrelevant - if you can manage to drag
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it home you can buy a polysiloxane phallus with which you could
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straightforwardly harpoon a whale. I'm happy with my rig and am happy that
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other people are apparently happy with it too. And you can have too much
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of a good thing. Allometry matters.
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Oh, yeah. Joss. Joss seems sort of lost. Or on hold, or ... something. I
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relate. There's a mixed load of feelings, that you're welcomed back but
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you haven't quite left, when ya move back in with your olds. If real
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estate in Sydney wasn't insanely overpriced ya wouldn't have to, you could
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go become a slave to a bank and expect to pay the fuckin' mortgage (Fr:
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death gamble) off before you died, and at least they hate everyone in an
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equal, detached, nothin'personal kind of way when they come every month
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for their scheduled suck on yer jugular. I was out for oh, shit, I dunno.
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Ten years? Two at Kairawa, three at Wollongong Rd, one wwoofing, and about
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four squatting various derilect buildings. The olds took me back into
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their place, into the back room. I've fixed the place up a fair bit since
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I got here and I'm currently deluded that they sort of like me around.
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I've got it pretty easy now since the word's got around I have more or
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less come home to... you know. Die.
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In that sense, however, all of us here at 7 River st are. So there's
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parity. Hang around this house and in ten years none of us will be here,
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we are quite literally a dead set. Mum's barely able to stand up without
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bracing her arms against a handy table or door jamb, dad's got a load of
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symptoms as long as your arm, and me, well, you know about my particular
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brand of mortality already. Dad can and very occasionally does whinge all
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he likes about my being a long-haired leftie (I'm not a leftie but he
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doesnt understand anarchosyndicalism) and that I should do something with
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my life and it's caustic off a duck's back now, my life's pretty much over
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so I don't have to justify what I do with it any more, but then, I never
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did anyway. Joss, methinks, is doing the uncomfortable squirm of someone
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who thinks she is hiding from her life under the gaze of people who think
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she shouldn't be. I conjecture that I can spot this particular squirm
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because I did it for about six months before The Day Everything Changed,
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the Day of the Scan, the day after which a lot of previously important
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stuff suddenly and surreptitiously ceased to matter a shit anymore. But I
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often see things which aren't really there.
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I sometimes don't chuck pills down my neck any more. Fuck it, I think to
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myself. What's it matter. Feed Bill or don't feed Bill. It's all a meal
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ticket to Bill. Bill's gonna eat me anyway. Bill me. Fill me. Kill me.
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"There's no use hidin'.
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The cells have begun dividin'."
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TISM - www.tism.wanker.com - Faulty Pressing Do Not Manufacture
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Well. Yes.
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I have cleaned some old things this week. I soaked the 1890's horsewhip in
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neatsfoot oil (the real stinky 1960's stuff, not the boiled linseed they
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sell as neatsfoot these days) for a couple of days and the room stinks of
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it, sorta like sump oil but a bit more sulfuric and the leather gleams and
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is supple, shiny. I think it's easier to crack, too. I also cleaned the
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heirloom W.M. Cashmore for the second time in my life. I think I cleaned it
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last when I'd turned 17, nearly half my life ago. It's a little bit
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corroded in spots. The action works, everything clunks together precisely,
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ka-thunk, just like it all did when it was manufactured in bloody
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Birmingham a century ago. Fearsome, murderous firestick, it is
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nevertheless the work of an artisan, little scrolly engravings adorn the
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nitro-proof metal and the walnut stock. It's heavy and dense, in the way
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that just about everything made in the last twenty years isn't. The
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barrels (full and half choke respectively) are Damascus steel, and have
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pleasing concentric coaxial patterns in them. It's sprung very heavily and
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I can barely manage to cock the thing. When I do it makes the same sort of
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low clunk as grandfather clocks do once per second. When the triggers
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(there are two) are pulled, little puffs of oil vapour are punched into
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the air where the pins would smack into the primers of any shells which
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might be stuck in the breech. Kapow.
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I've read about people wipin' themselves out with these. At the mo it's
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the furthest thing from my mind, but that might change in a hurry. Aside
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from Bill aching, for the time being, almost imperceptibly, nestled in the
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hollow of my collarbone, he appears otherwise to be behaving, and life is
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tooo fucking good. Out of plain curiosity I pressed the twin bores against
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my neck (are you paying attention, Bill?), and extended my fingers down to
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their far end and could easily reach the breech, 30 inches away. I guess
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if short people wanted to blow their head off with it they'd need to
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actuate it with their toe which would be awkward to fit in the trigger
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guard. Not to mention bloody undignified. You gotta admit that, live or
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dead you'd look like an complete 'tard with your big toe stuck in a
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firearm. A lot of years ago I played a trombone but I hadn't really grown
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to my current height, so when seated I developed this trick of pulling the
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slide out to sixth position with my foot to get particular notes. Until I
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found that they could usually be played in other positions anyway. Which
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was good since I looked like less of a freak. I stopped playing for
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humanitarian reasons once I got the trombone riff from Thomas Dolby's
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`Hyperactive' down pat.
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This is not the right tool for such a job. Not because it couldn't do it,
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but such a task is a slur on this beautifully crafted, historical
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instrument, its great age, its careful manufacture. It's not a stock
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nickel rod turned on a lathe, stamped with a serial number and the sorts
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of stupid modern warnings legally compelled to be stamped upon modern arms
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[You may seriously injure or kill yourself with this device]. Besmirched
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with a suicide it'd end up in a secured dumpster and be heated into slag
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under the eyes of bored cops who are convinced they're doing this sort of
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thing for our own protection (well, really, their protection from other
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people). With their own 9mm Glocks at their side while they do it.
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I saw a convex driveway mirror today with [Distorted Image] under it. Duh.
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There's a sign in Darling St which says [HIGH PEDESTRIAN ACTIVITY] on it.
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The council appears to think all the bipeds strolling around the
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kerbs are stoned or something.
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Nah. Fuck it. If you were to put modern ammo in this and fire it, it'd
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peel open like a banana anyway. It could do the job I am contemplating
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doing but in the same way as a chainsaw could cut butter. Wastefully, and
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with needless splattering of butter all over the place.
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I'da put a padlock for which I had no key, in the break hinge, if I
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thought I was gonna use this thing for anything silly. But I have no need.
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This thing'll sit in a box with its silica gel bag for another few
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decades, bored out of its two-bit ferrous mechanical mind, patiently
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waiting for something to blast. And don't get the idea this is the
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riskiest thing I did all day. It isn't, by a long way. I always feel much
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more threatened playing with live mains electrickery than I do with what
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amounts to a couple of iron tubes packed with explosive and sealed at one
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end. I slapped the 'probes on the power supply feed rails to see the
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active and neutral rails weren't switched around. 239VAC on the brown
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rail. They weren't. Good. I remember brown=active 'cos brown is the colour
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of the electrical burns you'll get if you fuck with it. Great mnemonic....
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really focuses the mind.
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And there's plenty of lethal edged crap in the kitchen. And the toolshed.
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The NSW government, in the guise of my old English teacher (currently the
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NSW police minister) is banning edged weapons. Again. Machetes, like my
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preferred tree-pruning instrument, will be outlawed. Like they matter at
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all to a constable with a 9mm automatic. Could they please ban motorised
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leaf-blowers? At least you can murder someone quietly with a machete. I
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shave myself with an edged weapon. I suppose they'll be banned too.
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My English teacher would be mortified by my syntactical ineptitude and
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grammatical ghastliness, but would he feel that these mistakes were wholly
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mine, or partly his? Would he learn that part of the fun of writing is the
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gratuitous mess you can make on the sacred literary walls of lexical dogma
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and etymological etiquette? Spel thingz howeva u lyke.
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To the terrified, everything is a weapon. The truly determined will drown
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'emselves in the bath. 'Spose they'll ban water? Illegalise rain and the
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delightful noise it makes on the roof and the leaves outside the window?
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Of course. [For Your Security].
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Oh. It rained of course. Lots. So I didn't ride the bike down at
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Heathcote. Spent sunday at home fixing power supplies. Which leads me to
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think about why I spend time fixing them. It has to do with their crappy
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construction. There are ways to fix this. So I wrote about it. Mainly as a
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way to avoid using antiword to convert some MS-WORD character reference
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documents into postscript prior to dumping them on the laserjet, for this
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court case.
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<geek>
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Supply.txt: this is a rant about power supplies, which came out of a
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discussion on catgeek@cat.org.au, about ATX power supplies, circa March 2004
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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From predator@cat.org.au Sun Apr 4 15:30:17 2004
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Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 23:21:08 +1100 (EST)
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-----------------------
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Empowerment.
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Lift the cowl off your computer and for a moment ignore the blinking,
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spinning techno eye-candy. Look for the most boring thing you can see.
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It's nestled in the top rear corner, attached to the chassis with four
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philips/hex head machine screws. It's invariably the grey metal box which
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via polychromatic spaghetti feeds current to your motherboard and all the
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other devices. It's your switch-mode ATX power supply unit.
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Who gives a damn about a PSU? You do. Especially if it breaks. The
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contents of this metal box is all that stands between your expensive
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hand-picked collection of high-performance semiconductors, and whatever
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noisy quarter-kilovolt of oscillating crud the grid wants to toss at you.
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I bet you've never looked inside it, have you? It's about time you did. If
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you own an ATX supply and it's long out of warrantee you have nothing to
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lose by doing so. Don't be ashamed if you've never looked - there's good
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reason to stay out of it. PSU's wrangle with mains electricity, which can
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kill you. However, if you unplug it, this problem goes away. Wait a while,
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so the big electrolytic caps in the front end can discharge.
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There are other reasons to look before you buy, and before you put an
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unquantified PSU into service. If, as I do, you build machines which have
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to stay on continuously for years, and are considering a PSU purchase, you
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should ask your vendor to open the PSU before you buy it. They can always
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put on another warrantee sticker later once you've had a look and learn
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what they're selling you. If they won't open it, find a vendor who will.
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It really does matter.
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Why you care, is because you own componentry worth at least 10x the price
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of the PSU to which it is connected, quite aside from the value of the
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data stored thereon.
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Contrary to the case warnings, there really ARE user-servicable parts
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inside. Quality control stickers (QC-OK and similar) made by the billion
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in China and stuck on everything from power supplies to underpants should
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be ignored, and evidently some manufacturers spend more on case stickers
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than they do on quality parts. Better to look inside and judge for yourself.
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------------------
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Crack it open.
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The cowl of the generic PSU is held down with four small countersunk
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philips head machine screws. Remove these, lift the cowl upwards and the
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internals are exposed.
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You'll see two sockets (mains in and mains out), a fan, and a circuit
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board packed with ferrite energy storage tori, big electrolytic
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capacitors, three-terminal regulators, heatsinks, small ICs, discrete
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components and so on.
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-----------------------
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Size matters.
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Unlike VLSI microprocessors, power supplies of a given wattage have not
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shrunk significantly in the last ten years, for reasons related to how
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much energy they're built to handle, which in turn governs the quantity of
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bulk metal, semiconductor and insulation required to handle it. With more
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ferrite, copper, solder and heatsinking inside, a good 300 watt supply
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will weigh noticably more than an equivalently rated cheapie.
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Look at the small 85 watt mini-ATX PSUs internal componentry, compared to
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a 300 watt item for component size and rating comparison. Your PSU should
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be running well within its capacity (about 70% of rated output is good),
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not struggling at its limits. Allocate 10 watts per harddisk and at least
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100 watts for a modern (read, 1GHz) CPU. Peripheral cards add to this
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greed for power, GPUs especially. And then remember that what the rating
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sticker says is not always what the the supply can deliver.
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----------------------------
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Things to look for.
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- PCB *screwed* to chassis, not plastic-clipped, not stuck on with
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silicone/glue - screws ensure good grounding of the ground rails to the
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casing. I like my main earth rail bolted to the chassis, too.
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- Electrolytic capacitors rated to 105 deg C, it'll say so on their case.
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Electrolytic capacitors by CHSSI, Luminous, Luxon, and JPCON had
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high failure rate problems in recent years but it is unlikely low ESR
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(extended series resistance) capacitors are used in generic switchmode
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supplies.
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- Grommets. These protect the cabling from abrasion during movement, where
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it exits the PSU case. Cable ties and folded metal are the usual cut-corner.
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- No component gaps on the circuit board - no absent circuitry, all
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board positions full. A particularly incriminating shortcut is the
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substitution of a toroid choke with a component of rather less inductance
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- a straight bit of wire. Good power supplies employ dedicated circuits
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for each rail, +12V, +3.3V, +5V, instead of several
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voltages derived from one regulator.
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||
|
|
||
|
- The Real Components. Look for a three-terminal monolithic
|
||
|
half-rectifier bolted to the heatsink, and not two back-to-back axial
|
||
|
power diodes soldered in their place, these don't cool as well as
|
||
|
equivalent-function regs due to poor contact patch between cylindrical
|
||
|
body and flat heatsink, and relatively small x-section of conductor
|
||
|
rails which are used as heatsinks in cost-cut supplies.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Circuitry to deal with power factor correction current (the PSU will
|
||
|
consume some energy in transforming mains voltage into DC rails served
|
||
|
up the way your PC likes 'em). You might find a passive PFCC AC input
|
||
|
capacitor on the mains input feed. Better PSUs have active circuitry to
|
||
|
manage PFCC.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Fuses, held in FUSE CLIPS. Yes, sometimes PSUs blow a fuse. They're
|
||
|
usually soldered down because manufacturers don't expect you to replace a
|
||
|
fuse, they assume whatever blows a fuse will render the rest of the
|
||
|
supply useless. Not always true. They also want you to buy a new supply
|
||
|
rather than spend twenty cents on a replacement fuse, but you knew that.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Chromed grilles, screwed in, not punched from the box sheetmetal. The
|
||
|
grilles have less air resistance so collect less dust and airflow is
|
||
|
better. Cooling is important.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Adequately rated wires feeding mains from the IEC-III sockets to the
|
||
|
PCB. A 300 Watt supply will be pulling more than one amp from its
|
||
|
active mains rail. So the wires from the feed socket to the PCB should
|
||
|
be rated to carry more than an ampere. You'd be dismayed at the flimsy
|
||
|
wire sometimes used.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Extruded, aluminium heatsinks with lots of fins, not the cheaper
|
||
|
punched tin plate ones (the latter exhibit lower thermal conductivity,
|
||
|
more thermal mass). Black anodisation is a nice touch - it helps heat
|
||
|
radiate off hot components to nearby chassis metalwork.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- thermal transfer grease and insulator pads between the heatsinks
|
||
|
and the regulators. Be warned - don't touch the stuff - it might contain
|
||
|
beryllium oxide.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Non-flammable sealant goop. This is variously used to fix
|
||
|
adjustment potentiometers to a set value, cover the vent ports on
|
||
|
electrolytic capacitors, and support/separate tightly packed components.
|
||
|
Take a sliver, see what happens when you try to burn it with a cigarette
|
||
|
lighter. If it burns it's OK as an insulator but a hazard if the supply
|
||
|
fails. And, in my estimation, if they use cheap sealant, fail it might.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Sockets. From IEC-III to the circuit board, and from the PCB to
|
||
|
the fan. It's just a nice touch.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Unscrew the PCB and look `under the rug' - at the circuit board artwork
|
||
|
itself. Poor soldering, bridges between IC pads, tombstoning of
|
||
|
SMD components, flux deposits left on the board, manual modifications
|
||
|
(performed by someone who has to do a thousand the same way per day and
|
||
|
will invariably get some of them wrong), fractures on the PCB corners
|
||
|
from damage in transit, these things are indicative of poor
|
||
|
manufacture and handling.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Listen to it when it's turned on. All you should hear is a fan. Stop
|
||
|
the blades to silence the noise and no odd buzzes should be
|
||
|
apparent from the board. Nor, for that matter, should there be any odd
|
||
|
smells.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Most PSU's will fail on these some or all of these criteria. So you'll
|
||
|
have to take matters into your own hands to get a PSU which really does
|
||
|
what you want, and will do it well for a long time. Which brings us to
|
||
|
modifications.
|
||
|
|
||
|
-----------------------
|
||
|
Augmentation
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Money.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Be prepared to pay extra if you spot a good PSU. This is not a mod, but
|
||
|
it's a change in attitude which will pay off with less downtime. Beware.
|
||
|
You can pay $160 for the exact same PSU at certain major supply houses,
|
||
|
as will cost you $50 at others. Shop around.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Metal Oxide Varistors.
|
||
|
|
||
|
These are a protective measure. They absorb most of the energy in a mains
|
||
|
spike, and I solder one each across active-earth and neutral-earth mains
|
||
|
rails. They explode when they do their job but are easy to replace and can
|
||
|
save your motherboard and peripherals. Some PSU circuits already have
|
||
|
these on board.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- IEC-III socket inline LC noise filtering.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Another protective measure, these sockets slot in where the plain plastic
|
||
|
recessed-male socket of the PSU was originally mounted. They are somewhat
|
||
|
longer than the socket they replace so care should be taken that the new
|
||
|
socket casing doesn't damage the rest of the circuit during modification.
|
||
|
Unsolder the original, solder in the replacement (don't swap the active
|
||
|
rail for neutral), close up and turn on. These are essentially LC
|
||
|
narrow bandpass filters and suppress everything either side of 50Hz, the
|
||
|
frequency at which mains is delivered.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Always on.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The only good thing about the previous power supply design, the AT series,
|
||
|
was that if fed mains, it powered up your machine. I want supplies on my
|
||
|
servers to always be on and not need human intervention. I strip a small
|
||
|
section of insulation off the green power-supply-on rail and couple it to
|
||
|
a black ground rail. PS_ON is thus always held low so the PSU can't be
|
||
|
turned off except by electrical shorts or removal of mains power (which is
|
||
|
great for remote reboots). Not all PSUs turn on automatically when this
|
||
|
has been performed, however. I usually remove the on/off switch too - I
|
||
|
yank the power cord if I want it turned off.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Ball bearing fan.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The failure of a $3 sleeve bearing fan in a stock $40 ATX PSU nearly ended
|
||
|
my dad's business - its seizure gradually cooked the backup harddisk (40Gb
|
||
|
maxtor in the top drive bay - convection cooling wasn't enough) and was in
|
||
|
process of toasting the motherboard.
|
||
|
|
||
|
By default I remove the typical sleeve-bearing fan, insert a 12V
|
||
|
ball-bearing fan and feed from the same rails as the original fan, or
|
||
|
insert 240V ball bearing fan, of the same dimensions, soldering the 240V
|
||
|
fan feeds onto the IEC-III incoming socket lugs. Be prepared for some
|
||
|
noise, these latter items move more hot air than an electioneering pollie.
|
||
|
A ballbearing fan usually lasts at least 25k hours depending on
|
||
|
environmental dust, and the quality of the lube used in the bearings,
|
||
|
which are sealed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Some people run more than one fan in their PSU, usually on the outside.
|
||
|
That's not a bad idea at all. Your PSU inhales pre-heated air from the
|
||
|
inside of your machine and will last longer with any airflow assistance
|
||
|
you might care to provide.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- absolutely reliable thermal overload cut-out.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I find some ATX PSUs will still work while fan is siezed, the PCB is
|
||
|
charred, insulation is smouldering (you can smell it) and device is near
|
||
|
ignition point. In this mode they cook the computer from the top down...
|
||
|
glitches will originate in an overheated CPU (check in BIOS or use hand on
|
||
|
heatsink - careful, can be *very* hot) and the topmost devices start to
|
||
|
disappear from the OS's device list, because they're not information
|
||
|
devices any more - they're toast.
|
||
|
|
||
|
If a PSU gets really hot and out of expected operating temp range, the
|
||
|
semiconductors which do its logic and power regulation undergo
|
||
|
tolerance drift, which might mean off-spec voltages are fed to the
|
||
|
motherboard, beyond its ability to regulate them. Glitch time!
|
||
|
|
||
|
Most power supplies have a positive temperature co-efficient resistor, or
|
||
|
a thermistor, or something similar to drive logic for thermal shutdown.
|
||
|
However, in the event of overheating failures you can't expect the thermal
|
||
|
protection logic to work reliably, precisely because it's overheated too -
|
||
|
and if gets overheated the thermal protection logic obviously didn't work
|
||
|
in the first place. I rely instead on metallurgy and employ a thermal
|
||
|
fuse, rated to 79 degs Celsius, soldered (carefully - if you overheat it
|
||
|
during install it'll go open-circuit and be useless) in series with the
|
||
|
active rail. These are used in room heaters and can usually carry 10 amps
|
||
|
minimum. They are very reliable. Using silicone sealant for electrical
|
||
|
insulation with good thermal coupling, I mount it onto whatever heatsink
|
||
|
has the most components on it (note, PSU heatsinks are usually live).
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Real Silicone.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I have been known to replace the existing sections of generic goop with
|
||
|
silicone. Not the vinegar-flavoured, so-called acid cure variety - I use
|
||
|
methyl ethyl ketoxime cure exclusively. Silicone never burns and ketoxime
|
||
|
cure won't chemically react with the PCB tracks.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Heatshrink
|
||
|
|
||
|
I like to see this around components and mains-energised solder lugs. Not
|
||
|
necessary really but is a nice touch.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Pots.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Variable fan noise drives me nutz. I sometimes put a potentiometer
|
||
|
in series with the 12V fan feed and screw it down to a speed I find
|
||
|
quiet.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
General design philosophy.
|
||
|
---------------------------
|
||
|
I observe *stupid* design errors in PSUs and if you do, you should think
|
||
|
about their probable consequences.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I tossed an Osborne PSU (unknown OEM) wherein the main heatsink was
|
||
|
screwed to the chassis cowl and blocking the air vents. Unsurprisingly
|
||
|
this came to my attention after it had cooked itself to death.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I've seen three-terminal regs rivetted to heatsinks. I'd be suspicious
|
||
|
of a supply from a manufacturer too cheap to use real bolts.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I see PSUs in which light-gague fan feed wires gradually move around over
|
||
|
time and catch the fan blades. Good manufacturers sleeve their fan feeds
|
||
|
or cable tie them to something immobile.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The air vent grilles on the case, and the case metalwork itself, both
|
||
|
serve as earthed Faraday shielding which protects your motherboard from
|
||
|
introduction of spurious noise signals into its supply rails, from the
|
||
|
switching noise of the PSU. I don't mess with these, nor do I drill extra
|
||
|
holes.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Burn-in.
|
||
|
|
||
|
People call me perverse but I keep chunks of obsolete hardware in part
|
||
|
because they serve as a useful, cheap and if necessary sacrificial testbed
|
||
|
for certain kinds of new components. Prior to installing it in production,
|
||
|
I like to run a new PSU at full crank for about a month, driving a pile of
|
||
|
failed ST-506 harddisks (the old, greedy, loud, 5.25 wide, double-height
|
||
|
ones) and an old motherboard stuffed full of whatever old peripheral cards
|
||
|
I can get. If the PSU is going to fail it will probably do it during that
|
||
|
time, and if this failure is damaging to peripherals well, it doesn't
|
||
|
matter.
|
||
|
|
||
|
- Maintenance.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yes, power supplies accumulate dust. It might be worth cleaning them out
|
||
|
with a paint brush, or compressed air, every so often. Annually's good,
|
||
|
it's helpful to schedule it with other downtime, drive replacements,
|
||
|
motherboard upgrades, and so forth. Don't inhale the dust, it's variously
|
||
|
made of old cockroach faeces, photocopier toner, carpet fibres, pollen
|
||
|
grains, human skin flakes, fungal spores and other respiratory irritants.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So. Plugger-in, turn on. Suitably equipped, your PSU will run for years
|
||
|
and even die valiantly saving the rest of your machine in the event of
|
||
|
various mains supply misadventures.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Power on!
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
----------------------------
|
||
|
|
||
|
</geek>
|
||
|
|
||
|
I watched a videotape Dougo sent me from Melbourne - Five minutes of Fame.
|
||
|
There's a lot of footage of me on it I hadn't seen. One of the advantages
|
||
|
of my intrinsic media-slut propensity is that various bits of footage of
|
||
|
me in various incriminatory modes of trespass remain on tape where I can
|
||
|
look at myself, slightly less aged, over a period of years. Note that I
|
||
|
didn't say mature. But I get a bit wistful looking at it. Footage of the
|
||
|
final years of my life and I didn't know it. Not like anyone does for the
|
||
|
first few decades. Mullet didn't expect to die ten years ago either. I
|
||
|
wonder what he was thinking as he drifted into unconsciousness in the
|
||
|
frozen, arid, air-depleted icescape on Makalu? Well, nothing.
|
||
|
Frostbrain'll stop you thinking - crystallise your thoughts and the meat
|
||
|
you use to think with too.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I like that Channel V clip the best. With ... hmm. Who does that backing
|
||
|
track... Tricky?
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Who do you think you are. You're insignificant. A small piece."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Yeah, I know already, fer fuck's sake. My life really is down the drain.
|
||
|
I can crap on about drains interminably. It's on TV so it must be true.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Arrr. Most of cat didn't show up at Black Rose Monday night. Just Hugh and
|
||
|
his fucked-up-hair dog Rupert, Neddie, Safa and myself. I dropped Neddie
|
||
|
back to his rental accom in Newtown (the bike always handles like a car
|
||
|
when it has a 100kg slab of Ned on the pillion seat - a smoother ride) and
|
||
|
then sucked caffeine at Cinque and watched the late-night freakshow trot
|
||
|
past the front window where I like to sit. Genia and Amber and KegRoll
|
||
|
(Arlene Textaqueen's younger sister) popped past and we hadda bit of a
|
||
|
chitchat. Which is another great thing about King St. Lots of people walk
|
||
|
past and if you keep your eye out you can have an impromptu chat to them.
|
||
|
Try that in Westfields. Then again, don't. Loiterers are a security risk,
|
||
|
right? Move along.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I popped over to XML's place. Smokering and Twitchin' Link were there. XML
|
||
|
is still not happy with her install so Puke-ohze went back on the machine
|
||
|
where knoppix went before. She wants to get on the net right now. Link and
|
||
|
Smokering work with Puke-Ohze all the time and neither of them could tell
|
||
|
it where to find its own drivers, either. We get up to stupid stuff.
|
||
|
Playing music on diving snorkels. Pouring cold water on each other's heads
|
||
|
unexpectedly. Putting our hands into the toaster for a dare (Russian
|
||
|
Toaster is a much simpler game than Russian Roulette and depends on you
|
||
|
not knowing wether or not the toaster is plugged into a live socket, which
|
||
|
as it happened I didn't - if this fact is ever published you can expect
|
||
|
toasters to be banned). Bashing each other up with bananas. Twitchin's fun
|
||
|
to watch, it's like he's got a bug in his servo' code someplace.
|
||
|
Tourettes. I edit it out of my awareness fairly quickly. He nicked off
|
||
|
later and Smokey and XML and I turned into something of a styrofoam
|
||
|
sandwich on the loungeroom beanbags. Arr. It was good. Shame about the
|
||
|
clothes.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Monday night, off in the rain again to Turella. Someone's done a kernel
|
||
|
transplant on Tarvat and I rebooted it at 2am so nobody'd notice the
|
||
|
downtime. Oh shit. Big mistake. Nobody tested this did they. So tarvat's
|
||
|
been down all day. I couldn't be arsed rebuilding it. Soz is gonna do it
|
||
|
tonight.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Tuesday. I got a recycled envelope in the post from Liela today. As in,
|
||
|
bits of cardboard held together with painter's edging tape. It bore a
|
||
|
'zine with no name but maybe it's called Thumb. It's Liela's hand in a
|
||
|
thumb's up jesture slapped down on the glass of a photocopier someplace in
|
||
|
San Francisco. Her nails are dirty, as I remember them when we squatted. A
|
||
|
fortune cookie insert fell out of it:
|
||
|
|
||
|
[You will overcome obstacles to achieve success]
|
||
|
|
||
|
Not this time. I'd be happy to overcome obstacles to merely achieve
|
||
|
mediocrity again.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I like that it's so unprocessed, grungy, fabricated of necessity and
|
||
|
whatever bits of paper happen to be there. How much information is there
|
||
|
that ya can't pack into a raw ascii screed like this one you're reading?
|
||
|
Heaps. Road maps from odd cities. Ticket stubs from Shannon airport.
|
||
|
Handwriting. Diary entries done on old impact typewriters with worn
|
||
|
ribbons with real errors xxxx'd over, typewriters are more honest that
|
||
|
way, and you can see which words are typed really hard by angry fingers.
|
||
|
Printouts from dotmatrix printers where the paper got slightly jammed and
|
||
|
the text is sort of curled down the page. Expired tickets from Deutsche
|
||
|
Rail. That there's no staples and it's held together by sticky tape. 35mm
|
||
|
film negatives. Slightly out of focus photographs, streakily xeroxed on a
|
||
|
photocopier which is just about running out of toner. I can make out,
|
||
|
faintly, the arch and delta patterns in her left thumbprint. Leila woz
|
||
|
'ere. ASCII just doesn't cut it in some departments though it's my fave
|
||
|
tool. Leila's face loses a lot when translated from a photocopy of the
|
||
|
black and white, silver emulsion shot to its ASCII essence which looks
|
||
|
something like {:-)
|
||
|
|
||
|
I noticed something. Without even thinking about it I've started
|
||
|
opening doorknobs with the backs of my fingers, my fist closed. Dont wanna
|
||
|
leave fingerprints. Paranoid fuckhead.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Wednesday. No, Shit it's Judgement Day. Holy fucking thursday. Easter. I
|
||
|
forget these religious rituals so thoroughly I am usually surprised by
|
||
|
them twice, or I discover them postally later, which is when I realise
|
||
|
that Jesus's main legacy is that I've lost twice the usual number of
|
||
|
demerit points and pay twice the normal fine I'd get for speeding or
|
||
|
whatever infringement a given cop wants to serve on me. Jesus didn't die
|
||
|
to save you from your sins, all of you religious twits out there eating
|
||
|
yer theobromine Easter Eggs and getting alfoil stuck in your teeth.
|
||
|
Jesus died to give the cops an excuse to raise revenue. This existance of
|
||
|
this fact makes cancer appear positively lucid and logical in comparison.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I am in court in 9 hours and I feel lucky that I am not going there on a
|
||
|
train with no return ticket for a custodial charge. I lined up a
|
||
|
caseworker at Justice Action, since most illustrious luminary
|
||
|
honourable learned worshipful magisterial magistrates like that their
|
||
|
miserable charges have been (my keys feel filthy typing this word)
|
||
|
_proactive_ about the penalty they are likely to encounter, it makes 'em
|
||
|
feel like I'm taking them seriously. So if I have to do community service,
|
||
|
I can do it there. Cookie works there. I can punch code for them instead
|
||
|
of harvesting empty drink bottles and used condoms on the side of the
|
||
|
tollways. My caseworker, Greg, has a zero haircut, wire-rimmed spectacles
|
||
|
like I have, and a long spent time in the slam for stabbing his wife to
|
||
|
death. I think from an experience point of view ya can't beat a convicted
|
||
|
killer for knowledge of the justice system. He's rather engaging.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I imagine it could go like this.
|
||
|
|
||
|
J "How do you plead?"
|
||
|
P "Verbally, your worship."
|
||
|
J "How do you plead?"
|
||
|
P "I can do it in writing if you like. Oh. Do you mean what do I plead?
|
||
|
Well I did all the stuff in the charge sheet. It's there in writing."
|
||
|
J "Guilty or not guilty, you twit?"
|
||
|
P "Guilt ceased to mean anything to me years ago. I did what it says in the
|
||
|
charge sheet. I acted in contravention of S4,1,a of the Inclosed Lands
|
||
|
Protection Act 1901. Sentence me please."
|
||
|
J "$550 fine and fuck off out of here you pitiful long-haired wanker."
|
||
|
|
||
|
If I can get away without a contempt of court charge I'll be surprised and
|
||
|
happy.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I'll write again when I'm done with this stupid court shit. Bored yet?
|
||
|
|
||
|
------
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thursday.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I found a tie. I parked somewhere with no time restrictions. Burwood court
|
||
|
has nice olivine/ sodium-feldspar granite tables and super-uncomfortable,
|
||
|
fuck your bum off, wire mesh chairs. They scan everyone who comes in the
|
||
|
door, except for the cops. The place stinks of cologne. Almost all the
|
||
|
people heard in these cases are blokes, young, muscly, with bowl haircuts.
|
||
|
Lebs and Tongans. Cookie came out to watch the case. It wasn't good to
|
||
|
hear on the morning that Legal Aid wasn't gonna represent me, cos it was a
|
||
|
non-custodial charge and all that shit.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thanks for the advance warning that you were gonna drop me in it guyz.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ours was the first case of the day. Purple Death Faerie had her own lawyer
|
||
|
from the SRC but he was a bit of a useless twerp. The maj' whinged to her
|
||
|
that she was 20 not 12. Lifting manhole covers and exploring tunnels is a
|
||
|
bit of an adventure... I don't think so, he said. He harped on that if
|
||
|
stupidity or foolishness were a barrier to her getting a section 10 she
|
||
|
wouldn't get one and that this lenience was extended once in a lifetime,
|
||
|
rah rah, patronising, pompous git. Getting into stride, I though. He let
|
||
|
her out with a six month good behaviour bond and she was ordered to pay
|
||
|
$61 court costs. I was relieved. I was gonna spring for her court costs
|
||
|
but she said she wanted to go in the drain. I listened to a bunch of other
|
||
|
cases. Wife bashers, car theives, dudes who decided to punch on with the
|
||
|
cops (well, that's how the cops put it) shoplifters. Poor magistrate Paul
|
||
|
Stanislaus Clorus (not the softest chap on the bench, I'm told), reduced
|
||
|
to presiding over such a sequence of minor drivel.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I read the sheet the cops provided about me. It has my real name listed
|
||
|
four times the same way, as my known aliases. It says I'm not
|
||
|
fingerprinted, which is bollocks. I bloody am. I'm gonna ask 'em to
|
||
|
destroy the fingerprinting entries.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Cookie showed up. She, PDF and I chatted momentarily with her lawyer
|
||
|
before the session started. Purple Death Faerie was dealt with first and I
|
||
|
listened closely to the Maj's comments since I suspected he'd like to hear
|
||
|
them from me later. Cookie wrote that I should mention in my plea that I
|
||
|
endangered the cops, which turned out to be a good idea. When eventually
|
||
|
the laywers for other cases shut up (they call each other `my friend') and
|
||
|
pissed off out of the courtroom I was called. It went something like this:
|
||
|
|
||
|
M: <my real name>?
|
||
|
P: Your worship.
|
||
|
M: Stand over there near the mic. Is <my real name> your name?
|
||
|
P: It is my name your worship.
|
||
|
M: What matter are you here for?
|
||
|
P: Trespass, your worship, Inclosed Lands Protection Act 1901, sec 4 1 a.
|
||
|
M: Are the facts in this sheet accurate?
|
||
|
|
||
|
<could I be bothered at this point to argue? No.>
|
||
|
|
||
|
P: The sheet is accurate your worship.
|
||
|
M: Do you understand the charge?
|
||
|
P: I understand the charge your worship.
|
||
|
M: How do you plead?
|
||
|
P: I wish to enter a plea of guilty your worship. Here are some references
|
||
|
as to my character your worship.
|
||
|
M: Do you have anything else to say?
|
||
|
P: If the magnitude of stupidity of this sequence of events was apparent
|
||
|
to me in advance I wouldn't be here. I've endangered myself, endangered
|
||
|
the police, wasted their time, wasted your time and I think to say
|
||
|
anything more at this point would just be an additional waste of your
|
||
|
worship's time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
At this point I shut up. I swear, he leaned back in his chair and beamed
|
||
|
at me as if, finally, he'd met someone who understood what a
|
||
|
soul-destroying waste of his time his job was. An interminable parade of
|
||
|
drunks, thugs and petty crims throwing every excuse at him, all the same
|
||
|
shit he'd heard before. Finally someone wasn't gonna bullshit him.
|
||
|
|
||
|
M: Well that's an eloquent summary. I am familiar with the
|
||
|
details of this case from the hearing recently held for your
|
||
|
accomplice. She had youth on your side. You do not. I find it
|
||
|
inappropriate to impose a fine at this stage and require you to enter into
|
||
|
a good behaviour bond for six months. If you break the terms of the bond
|
||
|
you can be returned here for sentencing. You are free to go.
|
||
|
|
||
|
This took all of about four minutes and cost me $61. Roughly the same as a
|
||
|
blow job in 1970 and about as meaningful. I got my stuff off the Sherrifs
|
||
|
at the door and walked out at about midday.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Joss showed up, I spotted her as she walked past a net cafe in which I was
|
||
|
eating some lunch. We went down to the park on Burwood road and ate
|
||
|
something with artichoke hearts and substitute Hungarian sausage in it. I
|
||
|
dropped her back to Balmain after getting a bit lost on the way.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I woke up friday and rode the suspension-seat treadly from Blakehurst to
|
||
|
Heathcote. This is my first serious ride since the big slash five months
|
||
|
ago. After 10km I was a bit chafed. I am not very fit but there was no gut
|
||
|
pain at all. Soz and Cookie showed up at the station and we rode down
|
||
|
Heathcote road to the service track. Cookie's left pedal siezed so we
|
||
|
gutted it on the roadside, and she ended up riding around on it with no
|
||
|
bearings or anything. We went from Heathcote road along the service track
|
||
|
to Woronora Dam, which was about 10km. The water board have sealed all the
|
||
|
gaps in the water pipeline so there were no handy pipeline leaks to drink
|
||
|
from but the creek water was potable and it was a clear, sunny day. Some
|
||
|
killer hills though. We reached the dam in the afternoon and checked out
|
||
|
the vast concrete monster and the 53 thousand billion gallons of water it
|
||
|
was reckoned to be holding back, before riding out again to the southern
|
||
|
freeway. It looks about 80% full but most of a dam's capacity is in its
|
||
|
upper layers. Soz and Cookie got the train back to Turella at Waterfall. I
|
||
|
rode back to Blakehurst, and was thoroughly fucked by the time I got
|
||
|
there, at the end of the roughly 45km haul. Was a time I'd eat 45km
|
||
|
without a thought. My knees and wrists hurt, my legs ached, my neck hurt
|
||
|
from holding my head up. I'm glad I'm going to Bathurst on a motorbike on
|
||
|
Sunday. 200km'd under my own steam would just about kill me.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I'm off to rebuild tarvat on another motherboard. Tomorrow I fix the
|
||
|
wiring in Lou's squat on Wilson St. A favour's a favour 'n all.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Double fucking demerit points. Thanks very much Christianity. Oh well. In
|
||
|
a parallel universe somplace people probably get double demerit points for
|
||
|
all of Ramadan.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
------
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's friday 16th, it's been a long time from the (dumb) terminal. Sunday
|
||
|
arvo I rode the 'cycle out to Bathurst. Took three hours and I arrived in
|
||
|
the near-dark, and was very nearly despatched by a 'roo which decided to
|
||
|
jump into the space where my bike was going to be in half a second (at 90
|
||
|
kays an hour). I hit the anchors and swore and the thing happily sprung
|
||
|
along the road for a few more skips, its feet thumping and claws scuffing
|
||
|
on the bitumen, before bounding over a fence and off into the distance.
|
||
|
The back tyre smoked when I locked it up.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I met Keith on the driveway at dusk and he told me where to drive.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Jude and Joss and Soph and I got a bit pissed. Smoked some cones. They
|
||
|
hadda leave the next day.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I've wandered about the place now where Joss spent some of her life
|
||
|
growing up. It's steep, and a bit denuded of trees. There's a power
|
||
|
transmission line snaking across the river gully at the bottom. Big veins
|
||
|
of quartz run along the property, striking North-South, I reckoned,
|
||
|
assuming west was where the sun set. Outcrops of basalt, clotted with
|
||
|
moss, jut out of the ground at funny angles in places. It is quiet and I
|
||
|
could hear the birds. The river is lined with willows and casuarinas with
|
||
|
bits of roofing iron wrapped around them in the direction of flow of the
|
||
|
water. There's roo, rabbit, horse and various other shit around the place.
|
||
|
Walnut trees in irrigated rows. Alpacas synchronously pointing their heads
|
||
|
at me in curiosity. A vinyard.
|
||
|
|
||
|
A big colourbond shed full of farm machinery. I immediately felt at home
|
||
|
there amongst the faint smell of silicate dust and machine oil. Sheds have
|
||
|
a language of their own. They tell you a lot about who works there, and
|
||
|
how they run their lives. This one had bits of stuff nobody could bring
|
||
|
themselves to throw out, various old parts and offcuts and obsoleted,
|
||
|
forgotten crap, ferrochrome spider habitat, all centred around the
|
||
|
inevitable battered work bench (slapped together with nine-ply and offcuts
|
||
|
of perforated angle iron, dressed in a graffiti of saw cuts, chemical
|
||
|
burns, grease stains, random holes from nails and drills), the altar where
|
||
|
the arbeitenmensche worships the god of machinery at the sacred vise
|
||
|
(mounted to the bench with whatever that'llfuckin'do scavenged bolts and
|
||
|
nuts and bruised washers someone dug out of the driveway or pinched from a
|
||
|
condemned vehicle), scarred with weld spatter, half-mulched in plastic
|
||
|
sawdust and rusted, writhing drill turnings. Smashed bricks where heavy
|
||
|
things fell on the floor. Bent plastic bottles with coloured goop leaking
|
||
|
out of them. Tins caved in, labels falling off. A kitchen where nothing
|
||
|
rots, nothing needs washing, and you have to wear shoes for your own
|
||
|
protection.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I wandered around the land. It's dry. I spent time looking at the bits of
|
||
|
lustrous schist here and there. The borer holes in the straining posts.
|
||
|
The skirts of hex mesh under the gates. I stood under huge old twisty
|
||
|
trees for which I do not have the latin binomials. Was pricked by nettles
|
||
|
killed by drought. Looked at the size-specifically sorted pebbles the
|
||
|
local ants place on their anthills.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I feel like I have to do stuff on farms. Variously smacked things with a
|
||
|
block splitter, failed (with Keith) to repair one of their irrigation
|
||
|
lines, did some earthmoving, manually moved heavy chunks (well, up to
|
||
|
about 20kg) of basalt to form part of a retaining wall. Carole was
|
||
|
subsequently cranky at Keith and I for doing this 'cos she reckons this
|
||
|
exertion might have decapsulated the node in my neck. I reckon that's
|
||
|
bollocks, not in the sense that she's wrong, yeah, maybe it did. But we
|
||
|
can't prove it. And does it matter? It was gonna crack open eventually
|
||
|
anyway. Or fuck up entirely of its own accord. Next stop on the lymphatic
|
||
|
plumbing from this node is my superior vena cava, then my right cardiac
|
||
|
atrium, then out to my lungs so the blood can dump carbon dioxide and
|
||
|
snarf oxygen in that miraculous feat of surfactant-mediated gas exchange
|
||
|
we dismissively refer to as breathing. Lungs are full of oh-so-narrow
|
||
|
capillaries. Where erythrocytes have to deform in order to pass single
|
||
|
file. Metastatic cells get caught and proliferate in situ. Gradually
|
||
|
strangling me, alveolus by alveolus, lobe by lobe, lung by lung. Fuck.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Diagnosed a failed battery in a rechargable torch. Washed dishes. Drank
|
||
|
wine. Made tea the slow way on a slow-burning wood stove. Checked out the
|
||
|
voltage in the solar panel batteries and pondered the tracking mechanism
|
||
|
on the panels. Ate dinner with Joss' parents. Watched a wasp paralyze a
|
||
|
spider too big for the wasp to haul off. Breathed in the fragrant (acacia,
|
||
|
eucalypt) smoke from the wood stove. Gazed amazed at the countless
|
||
|
brilliant stars and magellanic clouds and satellites drifting across the
|
||
|
upper atmosphere while meteors incinerated themselves in it, scarring the
|
||
|
dark with their fleeting glare, and felt no less worthy a man for not
|
||
|
knowing the names of the stars, which are poor substitutes for knowing
|
||
|
about stellar nucleosynthesis and being amazed that it led to the
|
||
|
fabrication of the stuff I am made of, and that the stardust I'm made of
|
||
|
can lie there and contemplate its own origin. Let the horses out of the
|
||
|
botton paddock by accident (though the horses knew damned well what they
|
||
|
were doing). Ate rose hip. Smashed off chunks of basalt and granite
|
||
|
outcrops (no visible molybdenum disulfide in the latter sadly, though
|
||
|
there is at the road cuttings near Wallerawang), bringing sparks from the
|
||
|
pick. Chatted to, reacquainted myself with, hugged, cried and snotted on,
|
||
|
sucked used bong smoke from the lips of, tousled the hair of, remembered
|
||
|
the smell of, shagged, dreamed about, conjectured to myself that I still
|
||
|
really don't know very much about, Joss. What a grip she has on my teensy
|
||
|
little bwane. I can't help it very much. It shits me that I will have to
|
||
|
let her go along with everything bloody else. I might never really get to
|
||
|
know about her. She will reveal what she wants to in her own good time.
|
||
|
Other people can't be expected to run to Bill's schedule. Maybe I should
|
||
|
get used to that.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On Wednesday night I drank beer in the bath, shampooed my dusty, sweatty
|
||
|
mop. Sat in a lounge chair and listened to a tape of various old music
|
||
|
(the revolution will not be televised, or the television will not be
|
||
|
revolutionised, or something). Pecked at dinner, distractedly. Didn't
|
||
|
finish the flute of red plonk I poured for myself. Said very little. Went
|
||
|
upstairs and climbed into bed and drank my hot chocolate long after it got
|
||
|
cold.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I woke up on Thursday after not, as I had gleefully anticipated, sharing a
|
||
|
shag with Joss (I was not in the mood, at all. Bill scares me.) And to
|
||
|
make life that little bit extra more encouraging discovered that coughing
|
||
|
hurt, sneezing hurt, breathing in hard hurt, turning my head hurt more
|
||
|
than it did on Wednesday morning. I'm miles from my olds, miles from my
|
||
|
life, and that arsehole in my neck is on the warpath. Oh well, I did stick
|
||
|
a needle in him and suck some of his guts out a few months ago.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Joss dozed on thursday morning. I was making tea downstairs when the
|
||
|
thought started to consume my thinking.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I Must.
|
||
|
Get out.
|
||
|
Of here.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I was leaving anyway but I felt like everything was so much more urgent. I
|
||
|
have to get out of here, I said to myself, surprisingly often. I'm turning
|
||
|
into a grumpy frustrated schedule nazi.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So I rode the 'bike down the dirt road (much faster than walking the 5
|
||
|
minute walk) and said goodbye to Joss' olds at Tanderra. Joss' mum stuck
|
||
|
enough dissolved selenite into me to get me classified as a mineralogical
|
||
|
deposit and I was halfway surprised I didn't start photoconducting in the
|
||
|
sunlight. She rang up her surgery, which is where I'm going after I type
|
||
|
this stuff.
|
||
|
|
||
|
She wants to gimme a draft copy of her coming book so I can proofread it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Pred : "You'd better type fast."
|
||
|
Carole: "I hear you, pred."
|
||
|
|
||
|
She does not type fast.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I went back to the small, smoky cottage and grabbed my stuff. Joss was
|
||
|
scribbling dilligently and closed the notebook before I got there.
|
||
|
I wouldn'ta looked anyhow. She left pages of stuff around the cottage for
|
||
|
three days and I didn't read them either.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The pack was on, the leathers sealed up. I had earplugs in my ears to stop
|
||
|
me getting additional tinitus from the impending scream of the fourstroke
|
||
|
engine half a meter below me, howling like a huge, angry blowie at 8000
|
||
|
revs. So she yelled at me that she loved me. 8-) I didn't hug her like it
|
||
|
was the last time I was gonna see her 'cos I didn't want to think it was
|
||
|
gonna be. As I write, knowing that Bill appears to have become rather more
|
||
|
proliferative, she's planning to be up there for anything from a week to a
|
||
|
month, I think this was maybe not such a good idea. But then I'd never get
|
||
|
off the property. If it had occurred to me at the time that we'd never
|
||
|
meet again, I wouldn't let my arms unlock. Someone'd have to cut me off
|
||
|
her. I dunno if I will meet her again. The Bill Army is getting
|
||
|
unpredictable.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Broken quartz crunched under the tyres as I braked to open the main gate.
|
||
|
It swung shut slowly, the rusty hinges squeaking as I pulled it closed.
|
||
|
The chain makes an interesting jingling noise when the latch falls upon
|
||
|
its bolt. I wondered if I would be here again. A younger me might have
|
||
|
floored it in the sandy driveway and showered the gate with the stuff but
|
||
|
that would have been a second wasted. I nudged it out to the tarmacadam
|
||
|
slowly and then, wheels on something solid, twisted the throttle and was
|
||
|
spat down the road like an orange pip. I love that it accelerated so
|
||
|
cleanly as I changed up through the gears. Go, go, go, feets, get me out
|
||
|
of here. Take me away from myself. The reassuringly mindless mechanical
|
||
|
hum of _going someplace_ sank into my bones as I fed my arse back on the
|
||
|
seat, leaned over the tank and fucked off down the road, my helmet making
|
||
|
random thwack noises as it became the last thing to go through the minds
|
||
|
of the morning's less fortunate airborne insects.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Beautiful day, beautiful ride, but I felt like shit all the way home,
|
||
|
shockwaves from potholes felt like punches in the guts. Turning my neck
|
||
|
hard right hurt. I had to laugh at a speed camera on a lonely straight
|
||
|
stretch of country road... neatly punctured, front, dead-centre, by a BIG
|
||
|
round hole from a ballsy firearm. I stopped to look at it, I'd reckon it
|
||
|
was hit by a .303 or something like that. 303's being what they are, one
|
||
|
round would be plenty. The projectile fragmented and peppered the back
|
||
|
wall of the box, too. Nice one, whoever put it there. I drove back to
|
||
|
Sydney, the speedo needle wobbling between 100-120 so I didn't really know
|
||
|
how fast I was going. I felt like shit when I got home and lay down. Why
|
||
|
does my guts hurt? Has one of Bill's messengers occluded something which
|
||
|
keeps my guts alive? Or did I just eat something dodgy?
|
||
|
|
||
|
I logged into cat and deleted 26 Mb of spam. R is in town for a chat
|
||
|
so I'll see her on Saturday. She seems to think I've got five years. Yeah,
|
||
|
right. This is characteristic of people when faced with nasty statistics.
|
||
|
I told her months ago that I had a 99% chance of being dead within five
|
||
|
years. Do people hear that and think that everyone in that cohort drop
|
||
|
dead exactly 1824 days from their diagnosis? No dude. The curve is not
|
||
|
flat then discontinuous and suddenly vertical at the sample point. There's
|
||
|
plenty of butchery all over the entire sample window. The window is
|
||
|
closing. On me. Eventually there Will be A Splatting Sound. Just remember
|
||
|
O for Oh, Dyin's.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I went to the Coopers Arms and chatted to Rumble and Graeme of that
|
||
|
mysterious shadowy high-tech organisation which only appears when you need
|
||
|
it - Rent-A-Geek. I haven't seen 'em for ages and come to think of it, if
|
||
|
this thing in my neck gets going, I'm not gonna see 'em again. I mentioned
|
||
|
to Gra what the situation was. He was a bit shocked. I gave him the usual
|
||
|
run about my life, which thank fuck I haven't pissed up the wall saving
|
||
|
for somewhere to live. I'd really be angsting about that if I had. Throw
|
||
|
the best 15 years of your life working for some bank only to have it all
|
||
|
pulled out from under you? Oh, puke.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Fucking kids are whinging, they can't get a job
|
||
|
the photocopy repairman is a smarmy smartarse knob
|
||
|
I've been running this office for so long I can't recall.
|
||
|
I've gone and pissed thirty years up against the wall.
|
||
|
|
||
|
`Good morning Mr Jenkins' the office girls all say
|
||
|
`Gentlemen' I tell the board `the agenda for today'
|
||
|
I play the part so desperately 'cos the truth so appalls
|
||
|
I've gone and pissed thirty years up against the wall.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Off I go to the Men's room for the seventh time today.
|
||
|
My bladder no longer hears me no matter what I say.
|
||
|
I watch the tiles in front of me and wait for the trickle to fall.
|
||
|
I've gone and pissed thirty years up against the fuckin' wall.
|
||
|
|
||
|
TISM - The Men's Room (www.tism.wanker.com)
|
||
|
|
||
|
So I diverted the conversation to something blokes like to talk about.
|
||
|
Beer. He's brewing lagers and ales with this wicked water-jacketted
|
||
|
cooling unit for psychrophile yeasts, convection fed, Peltier-cooled. Much
|
||
|
cheaper than a 'fridge. Arr. Remind me that I gave up beer for its carb
|
||
|
load, would you?
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
So I popped over to STUCCO and slapped in some network cards and crimped
|
||
|
some cable and drove home, feeling extremely like deep-fried dogshit. I
|
||
|
fell into bed, neck throbbing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Friday I went to Balmain and, at Carole's suggestion had a sh'load of
|
||
|
ascorbic acid shoved up my arm (about 30g) from really big syringes. While
|
||
|
the gut pains stopped a day later, as I write on Sunday I can't say it's
|
||
|
made much difference to Bill, who remains perched like Prometheus' eagle
|
||
|
under my skin, choppin' away at my lifespan. The little molecular wheels
|
||
|
take time to grind, but grind they do.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I chatted to Jude and drank vanilla tea and Clocktower port for a while
|
||
|
after I re-spoked Joss' wheel and eventually dropped him back to Enmore.
|
||
|
Jude is Joss' younger brother and Soph's squeeze. Soph is small and skinny
|
||
|
but makes up for it with sheer joie de vivre, and when I appeared she
|
||
|
exuberantly took a running jump and landed on me, slinging her arms around
|
||
|
my aching neck and clamping her legs around my aching guts and I didn't
|
||
|
know wether to scream or throw up. I didn't do either, to my surprise, and
|
||
|
managed to ask her to climb down. She got the guiltys about it and I told
|
||
|
her to relax, she couldn't have known. If she was ten kilos heavier I'da
|
||
|
puked. Man. Everyone wants to hug me neck and I can't let 'em go near it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
An SMS came in from Cookie. JA were havin' a barbie, Douggie was there
|
||
|
(still walking around after a semi shoved his car up a rail embankment and
|
||
|
made him stave the dashboard in with his head), so could I come over? Yeah
|
||
|
man. They do great nosh.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So I got there and sat down and patted the rottie and chatted to people
|
||
|
about stuff generally. Like that stupid court case I was at last week.
|
||
|
Totally unimpressive to people who have done long ugly periods in the slam
|
||
|
for serious shit, but oh, I guess it was on-topic, at least. They reckon
|
||
|
good behaviour bonds extend to the border but not beyond. Yeehar. I can be
|
||
|
naughty in Melbourne 8-)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ya know, I think getting a varicocele, then a redundant organ taken out,
|
||
|
were really the opening salvos, warning shots across the bow. You're gonna
|
||
|
be hit later, these said to me. Later is now. It's all different. Bill
|
||
|
variously aches, rages, and subsides. Bill launches his minions into my
|
||
|
fuel lines, my airways, my structural members, my signal systems, my
|
||
|
motors, hinges, cladding. They live off the land, making more of
|
||
|
themselves. Now I walk around telling myself, you're under attack, pal. I
|
||
|
feel like there's fuck-all I can do about it. I caught sight of my face in
|
||
|
a car window as I was walking the dog this arvo (she's so clean, so
|
||
|
fluffy, I stood naked in the shower last night and shampooed her and
|
||
|
brushed her and she shook her fleas off onto me where I can see and
|
||
|
crush'em between my nails) and I was scowling. Gravitation doesn't quite
|
||
|
explain the rather disproportionate weight of the ten or twenty grams of
|
||
|
stuff nestled in the root of my left shoulder.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I wonder at times should I just shut the fuck up about what Bill's doing.
|
||
|
Partly to stop it chewing up other people's heads. But thinking about the
|
||
|
whole process of dying is interesting in that it gives me a sense of some
|
||
|
kind of control over the process, and I think it's important to give other
|
||
|
people time to get used to it too. Bill's my hasslebot, my personal cron
|
||
|
daemon. Do these things at these times: Relax. Be Afraid. Relax. Be
|
||
|
Afraid. Be happy. Be sad. Go to a doctor, be told nothing especially
|
||
|
helpful, go home. Be sad, sad, sad. Hold your head this way when you
|
||
|
sleep.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Wake up! Time to die."
|
||
|
- Roy Baty (R.Hauer) to Decker (H.Ford), Blade Runner
|
||
|
|
||
|
Would people be pissed off if I told them much later on, when I was closer
|
||
|
to checking out?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Cookie's on the same emotional rollercoaster as I am. She's watching me,
|
||
|
observing that when Bill says jump, I ask from which clifftop. I
|
||
|
gobbled some sausages at the JA barbecque and went off for a quiet chat
|
||
|
with her. She comes up with the best ideas at times. Typical. All the ways
|
||
|
I've been considering getting out of this forecast corporeal shipwreck
|
||
|
work great but are NO FUN. Cookie's pretty sad about all this stuff. She
|
||
|
said to me she spent ten years with a dude who asked her every other day
|
||
|
if she still liked him, and I've spent the last year warning her not to
|
||
|
fall in love with me. That was the deal. Good shags, good conversation.
|
||
|
Something tells me she's getting attached. Not a good time to do it,
|
||
|
really. Maybe she isn't. Maybe she is. I dunno.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I've decided to start saying goodbye. Cookie and I shagged a couple of
|
||
|
damn good shags back at the 'factory. You don't think a shag'd stop me
|
||
|
talking, do you - who says men can't do more than one thing at a time?
|
||
|
Embedded in each other's bods, illuminated by the dim gloom of a small
|
||
|
electric light, I just had to smile at her and tell her it was a privilage
|
||
|
having known her and that she should never forget how cool she is. She
|
||
|
squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered a bit. Ahh, Cookie. Let me hold you.
|
||
|
It is surprisingly easy to say this kind of goodbye. Maybe 'cos I don't
|
||
|
believe it myself yet. Like I am trying it out. Sometimes you can't find
|
||
|
the words for the things you really need to speak.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Either way, I'm confused. You slow me down. What can I do.
|
||
|
There's one particular way I have to choose."
|
||
|
|
||
|
Split Enz - One step ahead. (Neil Finn) Waiata. 1980
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Didn't Dorothy Parker ever hear about smack? Even if it does cause
|
||
|
cramp, you're not gonna feel it. And like you'd give a shit about its
|
||
|
illegality. I had to laugh about the bit in the Crimes Act (1901) where it
|
||
|
forbids suicide. Nobody ever stands trial for doing it right.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Desist.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Oceans barren,
|
||
|
forests dead.
|
||
|
Cities swollen,
|
||
|
Soil's fled.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ozone's depleted,
|
||
|
rivers dry.
|
||
|
Planet defeated.
|
||
|
You might as well die.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I dunno why I never thought of it before. I've never used it. The prison
|
||
|
system is awash with the shit despite what Amanda Flintstone thinks. The
|
||
|
street price today is about $70 for a qtr gram, which is well more than a
|
||
|
quarter of a megabuck per kilo. Five migs will tell most of your pain to
|
||
|
fuck right off. 500 migs will kill most people. I'll need less if I'm
|
||
|
pissed 'cos ethanol is a synergistic CNS depressant. And I do rather like
|
||
|
old Mudgee Rummy tawny port. Plenty of that, please. I don't want some
|
||
|
do-gooder coming along with a suitcase full of opiate antagonist and
|
||
|
reviving my carcass. My supplier, who shall remain nameless, is
|
||
|
uncomfortable shouting me my death and wants cash from me in advance
|
||
|
before he supplies it. Fair enough.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Overdose is phonetically pleasing in the same way as are the words
|
||
|
overloads, overdrive, overthrows. It has a couple of problems. Fatuous
|
||
|
dickheads are glorified for using it to kill 'emselves, for a start,
|
||
|
though as ways to exit go, it's got a lot going for it. What really bugs
|
||
|
me is that the word overdose implies that you kind of fucked it up and
|
||
|
_accidentally_ fed yourself too much. Nobody ever uses it when someone
|
||
|
blows their brains out with a firearm, because it is so obviously silly to
|
||
|
claim that someone who does so dies of a lead overdose, though in some
|
||
|
senses this is exactly what they do. It's too obviously deliberate to
|
||
|
permit any of that comforting uncertainty that maybe they really wanted to
|
||
|
stay and they got out by accident.
|
||
|
|
||
|
{In 1986, in my high school science class, Eddie O'Meagher put lead
|
||
|
nitrate in the science lab fish tank. The fish did in fact did indeed die
|
||
|
of a lead overdose... though I suspect maybe the nitrate ions got 'em
|
||
|
first. What impressed me was how old Faulksie figured out the identity of
|
||
|
the material Eddie used.}
|
||
|
|
||
|
That it is a dose chosen deliberately, calibrated to exceed by a large
|
||
|
amount my opiate receptor systems, should be made plain to those of you
|
||
|
who might think otherwise. I checked the literature before plonking my
|
||
|
money down.
|
||
|
|
||
|
So then it's just a question of verifying the purity, not 'cos it really
|
||
|
matters from a contamination point of view, I mean, that'd be like
|
||
|
complaining there's the wrong isotope of lead in your shotgun shells. I'd
|
||
|
filter it and verify it (finally, having studied crystallography will come
|
||
|
in handy), but I'll also use the melting point range for diacetylmorphine,
|
||
|
which for the pure stuff is pretty small, centred on 173 degs C, or
|
||
|
243-245 degs C for the water soluble monohydrate hydrochloride (which
|
||
|
people stick in a spoon and heat to dissolve with a bit of bicarb to raise
|
||
|
the pH, which although facilitating solubility ends up destroying some of
|
||
|
the active stuff) so I can learn if it can do what I need it to do. Bliss
|
||
|
me into oblivion. Smack's reputedly better than orgasms, but that's no
|
||
|
slur on orgasms; you'd expect that from a drug which binds to all your
|
||
|
opiate receptors. It occurs to me I can dispense with trying to cannulate
|
||
|
myself and just stick it in a lipid based pellet and shove it up my bum.
|
||
|
Like I'll give a damn if I die with a smelly finger. It might confuse the
|
||
|
coroner though. Tough.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Saturday night I was in bed and mum walked in and I told her instead of
|
||
|
explosives or ricin I'd probably use smack to shut myself down. She said
|
||
|
she'd like me around as long as possible. I said yeah, but that will
|
||
|
probably hurt like hell and involve pain and disablement and I'd be fucked
|
||
|
if I'd die in some goddamned hospital full of beeping machines and the
|
||
|
faint stinks of disintegrating old people and death and phenol failing to
|
||
|
mask both of them. I'd invite 'em along but they'd only try to stop me.
|
||
|
They're not ready and probably will never be ready. They want me to be
|
||
|
taken by something they can cleanly despise for doing it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Then there's the question of what to do with me dear ol' carcass.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I think rather than paying to waste propane and be converted to air
|
||
|
pollution, or acquiring a box and chewing up landfill space at Woronora, I
|
||
|
think I'll donate my bod to a university anatomy department instead. One
|
||
|
good chop deserves another. I benefitted greatly from the chance to marvel
|
||
|
at the lone, pale, cold, acrid, but beautifully dissected biomechanical
|
||
|
chassis which used to be home to a sentient personality. Bodies log our
|
||
|
history; which muscles are developed, what creases line the face, where
|
||
|
the calluses have formed, where are the burns, scars, stretchmarks, moles,
|
||
|
tats, and so on, but there's so much data lost forever when the brain
|
||
|
dies. So I whizzed this off to Dan, prodigious reader of books and
|
||
|
USyd anatomy department geek.
|
||
|
|
||
|
>>>
|
||
|
|
||
|
From predator@cat.org.au Tue Apr 20 14:22:50 2004
|
||
|
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 13:12:41 +1000 (EST)
|
||
|
From: predator@cat.org.au
|
||
|
To: Dan <zzzzzz@anatomy.usyd.edu.au>
|
||
|
Subject: Re: experiments in oncology
|
||
|
|
||
|
> Hey, Pred, it really sucks that you've become experimental subject.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In some ways. But it is sort of OK in that I do have some say in the
|
||
|
experimental design. Like when to call it all off. Not a lot of rattus
|
||
|
norvegicus get that privelage.
|
||
|
|
||
|
<chop>
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dude. On a somewhat more macabre note, I think it'd be a waste of a
|
||
|
perfectly good carcass if I were converted to air pollution or stashed in
|
||
|
landfill. I can't donate me organs 'cos they'll have cryptic mets in them
|
||
|
by now. So, who do I ask about bequeathing my bod to say, the anatomy
|
||
|
department?
|
||
|
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
1971 model H.sapiens. One owner, in good condition, some scarring, one
|
||
|
missing kidney and one missing adrenal gland, classical metastatic
|
||
|
pathology. Some fillings. Approx 65kg. Male. Caucasian. 186cm long. Comes
|
||
|
with papers. May be GPL'd. Behaves well in formalin. Contact predator@cat.org.au
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
|
||
|
>>>
|
||
|
|
||
|
He came back saying yeah there's a cadaver program, he'd send me a brochure.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I loved reading Frank Netter's illustrated dissections. My bod has, on the
|
||
|
whole, been a truly delightful thing to live in. I can't really donate the
|
||
|
organs, I think. They're full of little precursors to tumors by now and
|
||
|
that's exactly the wrong sort of gift that keeps on giving. Transplant
|
||
|
recipients are usually pharmacologically immunosuppressed so as not to
|
||
|
reject the bits of someone else's guts which keep them alive, wouldn't
|
||
|
reject my tumors either. Which by the time I was in a position to donate
|
||
|
them would be full of cells selected for immunoevasion anyway. They're
|
||
|
gonna have a much harder time doing anything antisocial perfused with
|
||
|
formaldehyde. Come to think of it, so will I. I know what anatomists and
|
||
|
med students do with corpses in anatomy lab. I mean, come on, it's fun to
|
||
|
wiggle the fingers and watch the tendons move up and down. I reckon the
|
||
|
real fun is at the molecular level but you can't really see that at the
|
||
|
macroscopic scale.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On sunday Charlie rang me (from fuckin' Canada!) and chatted about stuff.
|
||
|
He's depressed about Iraq, which is fair enough. He's doing an embedded
|
||
|
gnu/linux project. I'm sizing up the possibility of living in his house
|
||
|
for a while but I told him it's quite possible he'll have a corpse
|
||
|
stinking his house out. I know not when the axe will fall. He understands.
|
||
|
I might end up crawling around in the subfloor, since the wiring's fucked
|
||
|
up a lot.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sunday night I nearly ruptured myself reading Dilbert: Highly Defective
|
||
|
People before going out to see "The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind"
|
||
|
which was great, great, great! I haven't had my plot-thread tracker
|
||
|
exercised so thoroughly for ages. And great concepts... reactive, sentient
|
||
|
nested memories! XML and I walked out of it, snogged in the park a bit and
|
||
|
walked back to her pad. We've both mowed off our hair. We were on the bed
|
||
|
but then stood up and fucked some posters off the wall. I don't know how
|
||
|
she hung on. She left a bite in my right deltoideus I'm gonna be feeling
|
||
|
for weeks.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The price one pays for being promiscuous is that tactical rubber is de
|
||
|
rigeur. I haven't barebacked with anyone for nearly a year. I've been more
|
||
|
or less shagging the same bit of latex for a long time, backed by
|
||
|
different people's bodies. Ya really do lose a lot of the sensation. And
|
||
|
when yer not a rock-hard 20 year old, the mechanics become sort of tricky
|
||
|
on the second shag. I wrote about them to someone a few weeks before Nov
|
||
|
19, 2003, diagnosis day. It'd been edited a little bit but only the
|
||
|
original recipient will know where.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
<geek, physiology>
|
||
|
|
||
|
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 00:10:21 +1000 (EST)
|
||
|
From: predator@cat.org.au
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dude... if I really need to get off, I'll find a way. If I don't, so what?
|
||
|
I have fun getting you off, and like that you do too. I long ago gave up
|
||
|
caring if I got off or not. There are loads of advantages to not
|
||
|
getting off... like, say, greater likelihood of getting off later 8-)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Warning: gruesome male anatomy/psychology lesson follows.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I think it's not a reflection on you or anything, but rather on the nature
|
||
|
of male physiology. I think men are evolved to shoot first, ask questions
|
||
|
later, and if I don't get off straight away, as I sometimes do in morning
|
||
|
shags, I can maintain a useful prong for long enough to get you
|
||
|
off, but that may change the physiological conditions required for me to
|
||
|
get off. Some women get off and dry out or get extremely sensitive (etc).
|
||
|
|
||
|
Speaking for my own rig, there's a narrow stimulatory window which one has
|
||
|
to be in to stay hard but _not_ shoot. If you dry out, or I leak lube too
|
||
|
much, I go from fucking you with a condom which stays still relative to my
|
||
|
dick, to fucking a condom which stays still relative to you, which doesn't
|
||
|
feel as good, so I go soft; not enough friction / too much lube (a
|
||
|
function of the lube already in the condom, the lube I leak {which comes
|
||
|
from the prostate gland} inside the condom, plus whatever lube you're
|
||
|
secreting or adding to the outer surface of the condom) means things go
|
||
|
soft too. And if everything's really great, I shoot and go soft.
|
||
|
|
||
|
If evolution gave a damn, men'd have *bones*.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The internal hydrostatic pressure in the corpus cavernosae (the technical
|
||
|
term for hardon shaft rigidity) varies in a complex way, a function of
|
||
|
penile diameter and the diameter of the rubber ring at the bottom of the
|
||
|
franger, what your and my pelvic floor musculature is doing, position,
|
||
|
insertion angle, how horny I am, synchrony of movement (if we move in the
|
||
|
same direction at the same time, hence end up *not* moving relative to
|
||
|
each other, which is effectively the same as being still) and to borrow
|
||
|
from engine terminology, the bore and stroke parameters. Hydrostatic
|
||
|
pressure determines how hard the shaft is, and thus wether or not you
|
||
|
(recipient) will be getting off with it. Few women seem to get off with a
|
||
|
soft cock.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The corpus spongiosum is the separate erectile compartment which makes the
|
||
|
penile *head* inflate; how inflated the head is determines how much
|
||
|
sensation it gets, and the more it gets, the less I last, since I'll
|
||
|
shoot. Its pressure is also a complex function, I can increase it partly
|
||
|
by perineal flexure, but not very well. The main difficulty one has as a
|
||
|
bloke is defeating its tendancy to be inflated all the time, leading to
|
||
|
short, fast shags which don't satisfy the recipient very much. Sometimes,
|
||
|
there's no other way (well, none which don't involve rather more invasive
|
||
|
practises such as prostate massage... uh, electric current, etc) for a
|
||
|
bloke to get off, tho. Some shags I have experienced had an additional
|
||
|
problem: I'd be stabbing myself in the eye of my dick with a cervix, which
|
||
|
wasn't fun for either of us, so I learned to keep the shaft pressure up
|
||
|
but the head pressure down.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Other stuff influences my horniness parameter. Noise I
|
||
|
generate with matresses, blankets, headboards, etc is one. External noise
|
||
|
(from outside The Shack) is another, depending on wether it indicates
|
||
|
likely proximity of spectators. How ... hmmm... held(?), appreciated,
|
||
|
self-confident, pissed (as in beer) I feel, are others too. How much I
|
||
|
have to think about wether or not the franger is still intact (since when
|
||
|
the inside of the franger is well lubed and if you get dry, if I am still
|
||
|
hard, it will feel like it isn't there, which might well mean it's torn,
|
||
|
which means it needs to be checked) is also another distraction, but one
|
||
|
which needs control since you quite reasonably find accidental pregnancy a
|
||
|
bloody nuisance. Can't they use kevlar? Actually these frangers are pretty
|
||
|
good, I reckon.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Given all of that, it's simpler if I worry about it than you worry about
|
||
|
it, since I'm in the uh, driver's seat. If I didn't worry about any of it
|
||
|
at all, I would be a wombat par excellence, eats roots shoots and leaves,
|
||
|
but that'd be less fun for you.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the extreme dark, it is impossible to tell if a condom is concave up
|
||
|
(bad) or concave down (good) prior to putting it on. That is a significant
|
||
|
pest, since the time and thought one expends determining this correlates
|
||
|
closely with lost hardon pressure. Distractions, distractions!
|
||
|
|
||
|
On aim: penises are blinder than bats (bats at least can echolocate), and
|
||
|
when covered in latex, are totally useless for generating tactile
|
||
|
directional correction signals, so I am grateful for any aiming you happen
|
||
|
to provide, though it will be better if we agree on a common nomenclature.
|
||
|
When I hear "up", I think in the direction opposed to grativational down.
|
||
|
Because horniness reduces my higher brain function, I hear "left" and
|
||
|
assume it to mean "I should move towards my left." rather than doing the
|
||
|
transposition which would mean "I should move towards your left". If we
|
||
|
can figure this out you'll get much less random stabbing in the butt
|
||
|
cheek, thigh, etc, and I'll get to fuck you sooner. 8-)
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
</geek>
|
||
|
|
||
|
So much for the grisly technicalities of tactical rubberware.
|
||
|
|
||
|
(The recipient pointed out that the irresponsible wombat eats, seeds,
|
||
|
twigs, leaves).
|
||
|
|
||
|
Does it count that we exchanged bodily fluids 'cos we cried into each
|
||
|
other's eyes? Well, yep. Viri really don't last long in the nasty saline
|
||
|
lubricant of the eyeball, the environment is too different to what viri
|
||
|
have to tolerate in the genitals. No hair is good. If you haven't tried
|
||
|
it, do.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Monday 20th April.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I paid my court costs and went to the Auburn cop shop where I was told my
|
||
|
fingerprints will remain on the police database forever even though I have
|
||
|
no conviction recorded against me. Who says we don't live in a police
|
||
|
state? Oh well. I'll just have to stuff my fingerprints with superglue
|
||
|
before I commit any future crimes with my fingers. While I was finding out
|
||
|
that my fingerprints will be wasting police harddisk space for the next
|
||
|
few decades, the van parked next to my bike reversed into it so when I got
|
||
|
back to it, the machine was on its side and dribbling petrol onto the
|
||
|
bitumen. Dudes stupid enough to do this can, I expect, be assumed to be
|
||
|
stupid enough not to realise that a human being can pick up a dropped
|
||
|
motorcycle in a few seconds.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I went to Balmain and fell asleep on the couch and woke up just in time to
|
||
|
get another shload of ascorbate fed up me arm. Margo cannulates
|
||
|
brilliantly. As I write now I think Bill is calming down a bit. But I'm
|
||
|
gonna get a cervicothoracic CT anyway. See a bit better what he's doing.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
My early birthday present, in one of mum's more brilliant suggestions, is
|
||
|
that I fly to Melbourne instead of motorcycle down there. I'll say yes.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
April 20. I stuffed my bod in the CT scanner at Hurstville. Three times
|
||
|
they stuck me veins with a 19-gague needle but couldn't get any blood
|
||
|
so eventually they stuck me with a smaller 21-gague needle and that worked
|
||
|
ok. I'd be pissed off about this 'cos I have veins like garden hose,
|
||
|
but I have other things to angst about at the mo. I'm a bit of a
|
||
|
pincushion. Covered in bandaids. Whammo, in went that iopamidol, I've
|
||
|
grown to love its whooshy hot rush. The unfortunately named Dr Lazarus
|
||
|
wrote this about the scanned cervicothoracic images.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
"There is an ill defined mass in the left supraclavicular fossa which
|
||
|
measures approx 5 x 3cm in diameter. It extends superiorly for a distance
|
||
|
of 10cm. The mass is enhancing heterogeneously and it contains several
|
||
|
low density areas consistent with necrosis.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The mass is situated deep to the sternocliedomastoid muscle and
|
||
|
superficial to the thyroid gland. It begins at the level of the superior
|
||
|
pole of the thyroid on the left and extends inferiorly to the thoracic
|
||
|
inlet and is compressing the left brachiocephalic vein. The left common
|
||
|
carotid artery appears normal but the left jugular vein was not visualised
|
||
|
and is either compressed or invaded. No other masses are detected within
|
||
|
the neck.
|
||
|
|
||
|
On mediastinal windows there is no definite hilar or mediastinal
|
||
|
adenopathy. The pleura are normal. On lung windows there are no
|
||
|
metastases. The left nephrectomy is noted. The cholecystectomy is
|
||
|
noted. There are no obvious liver metastases."
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Cholecystectomy?! I didn't think they took my gallbladder in November.
|
||
|
Nah. She's gotta have that wrong. The pictures are interesting... I have
|
||
|
about fifteen bits of stainless wrapped in various places around the bits
|
||
|
of vasculature tied-off six months ago.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Bill's squishing my left brachiocephalic vein (which takes blood from my
|
||
|
left forearm and other things). So I'll be looking periodically at my arm
|
||
|
veins to see if the left ones stand out more than the right ones do.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Appparently, Bill's blocked my fucking left jugular vein. Grrr-reat. I
|
||
|
sort of need that to work. Blow it open and the left half of my head
|
||
|
drains of blood and I die in minutes. I guess if he's invaded it they're
|
||
|
gonna have to chop it out. I'm not dead yet probably because there's
|
||
|
crossover venous drainage from the bottom of my skull, so the blood coming
|
||
|
out of the left side of my head, in which my thoughts were steeped only
|
||
|
moments before, is now being routed down the right side of my neck. I
|
||
|
didn't even notice.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Bill might have just as easily decided to invade my carotid artery which
|
||
|
feeds blood to the left side of my head and in doing so would cripple me,
|
||
|
if it happened quickly. I'm incubating my own guillotine. I'm gonna live
|
||
|
my remaining life half an inch from sudden death.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I feel like shit. I think I'm gonna go out to a sleazy pub and get pissed.
|
||
|
|
||
|
--
|
||
|
|
||
|
So I did. The Oxford has the highest concentration of seedy dudes of any
|
||
|
pub I can immediately mention. I must be getting old. I realised a second
|
||
|
after collecting my schooners of Old that I looked the topless barmaid in
|
||
|
the eyes when I ordered my beer, instead of at her breasts. Floody walked
|
||
|
in and we chatted. For the last time, I think. Yobs sank beer and smoked
|
||
|
cigs in the nonsmoking section and watched the horseraces on telly and
|
||
|
spoke very loudly. Floody and I fitted in pretty well. I like engineers
|
||
|
like Floody. His final words to me included `Have a nice death.' and I
|
||
|
appreciate that this is what he meant, rather than have an ugly, messy,
|
||
|
painful, prolonged death. Death's just another optimisation problem to
|
||
|
engineers.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got pissed enough that 200m down Canturbury road I decided I was unfit
|
||
|
to drive. So I stopped in at Cremmo's and slept on the couch. Their moggie
|
||
|
sat on my head. The place stank faintly of catshit. Its demolition will be
|
||
|
no sad loss. Someone should be shot for inventing a fire detector that
|
||
|
beeps every 22 seconds. The kitchen tap leaked continuously. Cremmo snored
|
||
|
prodigiously. I staggered out in the morning and paid for a nice 2nd hand
|
||
|
circular saw (a perhaps unfortunate description for a such a device, it
|
||
|
implies a bloodier history than it perhaps deserves).
|
||
|
|
||
|
Somethin' tells me by askin' Jude to ask Soph to back off me a bit I've
|
||
|
pissed Soph off and probably pissed Jude off. Soph was pretty full of
|
||
|
choof when I saw her. Didn't say a thing. Aw shit. What's happenin' to my
|
||
|
sense of perspective. Cancer's supposed to turn me into a corpse, but
|
||
|
there's nothing in the documentation that sez it'll turn me into an
|
||
|
arsehole in the process. Maybe I have a different sort of cancer to the
|
||
|
one they diagnosed, metastatic arsehole-oma?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Goddamnit. SU's chem databases won't let me look at molecular fragments,
|
||
|
just whole molecules. Damn damn damn.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Word has reached me that diode is still offering people a look at the `get
|
||
|
fucked' emails I sent him. Hasn't he learned that this sort of behaviour
|
||
|
is bad form?
|
||
|
|
||
|
---------
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thurs 22. Tomorrow I get on a flight to Melbourne.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I brushed my teeth and notice Bill swelling prominently in my neck. I have
|
||
|
an odd shopping list. The first two are probably an avoidance payment, an
|
||
|
investment in the idea that it's worth fighting this disease, though part
|
||
|
of me is convinced this is bullshit, I have my marching orders. The
|
||
|
last two are more acknowledgement that I have to prepare.
|
||
|
|
||
|
selenocystiene
|
||
|
B group vitamins
|
||
|
.5g smack
|
||
|
Barbarian Invasions
|
||
|
|
||
|
The latter was a movie. I wasn't ready to see it. Had some good bits
|
||
|
though. Like when the chick was talking to the dying man's son and his
|
||
|
mobile phone rang. She snatched it from his grip and flung it in the
|
||
|
campfire. Bell Hooks is right. Phones aren't quite there. When they do get
|
||
|
there, as they appear to be doing with their graphical capability and
|
||
|
screens and stuff on modern fones, they'll be like being near someone who
|
||
|
interrupts all the time, you'll wanna punch them out.
|
||
|
|
||
|
-------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
From Bell Hooks: Interview with A. Juno
|
||
|
RE/search publications "Angry Women" (A. Juno, V. Vale)
|
||
|
(c) 1991 ISBN 0 940642-24-7
|
||
|
|
||
|
Hooks: "I struggle a great deal with the phone, because I think the
|
||
|
telephone is very dangerous to our lives in that it gives us such an
|
||
|
illusory sense that we are connecting. I always think about those
|
||
|
telephone commercials: "Reach out and touch someone!" and that becomes
|
||
|
such a false reality - even in my own life I have to remind myself that
|
||
|
talking to someone on the phone is NOT the same as having a conversation
|
||
|
where you can see them and smell them. I think that the phone has really
|
||
|
helped people become more privatised in that it gives them an illusion of
|
||
|
connection which denies looking at someone.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Telephone commercials can be "great" because they actually let us see that
|
||
|
person on the other end - see how they respond and give off this warmth
|
||
|
that is never really conveyed just through the phone, so that we're really
|
||
|
not just having a diminished experience of the non-person you don't really
|
||
|
see on the other end.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And it's hard to remember this - because we're seduced. I love
|
||
|
Baudrillard's book, Seduction, because he talks a lot about the way we're
|
||
|
seduced by "technologies of alienation". We know that all technologies are
|
||
|
not alienating, so I think its good to have a phrase like "technologies of
|
||
|
alienation" so that we can distinguish between those ways of transmitting
|
||
|
knowledge, information, etc and other ways of knowing that are more fully
|
||
|
meaningful to us.
|
||
|
|
||
|
AJ: "Don't you think that in our addictive culture, these seductions set
|
||
|
up addictions which can never be satisfied ? The telephone gives us this
|
||
|
impossible promise of connection; its "400" numbers promise a simulation
|
||
|
of friendship and community (like a long-distance nightclub) which can
|
||
|
never be fulfilled."
|
||
|
|
||
|
---------------------------------------
|
||
|
|
||
|
Beaudrillard, however, is full of shit and EO Wilson gives him both
|
||
|
barrels in his book Consilience. Go read it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I said goodbye to Keogh. He kept me around, he admitted, for as long as
|
||
|
possible, which made me late. The view from the rooftop on College street
|
||
|
was very nice. 23 stories up. No handrail. I dunno what it is that I find
|
||
|
annoying about someone whom, on the occasion that I tell them I'm dying
|
||
|
and ain't seeing them again, tells me nothing new, nothing I consider of
|
||
|
any significance. Maybe he did but the problem is that I find nothing
|
||
|
especially of significance any more. The grey curtain of apathy, my
|
||
|
ghostly shield which can protect me from anything, seems to be levitating
|
||
|
up around me, to envelope me, on its own invisible curtain rail.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I went down the huge staircase at Oatley and said goodbye to Deb. She made
|
||
|
me dinner. She's mid-thesis. Seeing her reminded me of the huge owl which
|
||
|
sat, hooting quietly, in our jacaranda tree in the back yard about a month
|
||
|
back. It looked down at me, blinking, as I looked up at it, for a long
|
||
|
time. It was a BIG owl. Spotted owl I think. Hoot. Hoot. Hoot. She's busy
|
||
|
as hell, mid-thesis. Deb tells me I should fight it. Looks like at 34,
|
||
|
Mullet's gonna have lived for longer than I will. I finally got around to
|
||
|
loaning her Jared Diamond : Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, and
|
||
|
Guns Germs and Steel. She can take as long as she likes to read 'em.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Fight it. Whaddo I do, punch myself in the neck until I think Bill's
|
||
|
sufficiently broken that he'll leave me alone? Groan.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Joss finally emailed me about the messy puke tendancy associated with bulk
|
||
|
iv smack. She takes a long time to reply to my stuff. I dunno why yet.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I'm starting to think I should just shut the hell up about this damned
|
||
|
thing. It makes everyone sad. And I catch the sadness back off them.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got home and was packing. I was putting some books back in the booshelf.
|
||
|
Mum, like she always does, decided to stand in the doorway. When I was
|
||
|
about to leave, I told her, calmly, firmly, not to stand in the
|
||
|
doorway cos I'd be walking through it in a moment. She walked backwards,
|
||
|
lost her footing on the same awkward doormat I'd complained two years ago
|
||
|
had injured my ankle, and fell, remarkably gracefully, sideways into a
|
||
|
nearby armchair. Very dramatic. Soon she was whinging about how painful
|
||
|
the fall was. I mentioned that I said two years ago the new doormats, with
|
||
|
their steep square edges, posed as much risk to her as they did to me and
|
||
|
that her response was that I should look where I was going.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I log in and am writing a messy email to Joss. Time seems so short. I'm
|
||
|
sort of scrabbling for stuff to say. There's stuff i want to write, I
|
||
|
nearly had the right phrasing but arrrr.... Fuck. Mum's voice floats up
|
||
|
the corridor, asks am I there, I answer No, can I come in she asks and I
|
||
|
say, NO, she comes in anyway. She spends hours listening to the radio,
|
||
|
looking at the TV, speaking on the fone, mum wanders in at half-past
|
||
|
midnight, a time I choose precisely so everyone will not be disturbed if I
|
||
|
tie up the fone line, so they will not disturb me, with a fistful of
|
||
|
fifties (coincidentally exactly enough to buy a lethal load of smack and a
|
||
|
nice breakfast, but she doesn't know I've already paid) and tells me to
|
||
|
spend 'em in Melbourne. I told her I have enough money, get out of this
|
||
|
room, right now. Go. GO. Get out. Does she wait up purely to annoy me? To.
|
||
|
Slowly. Mumble. In. My. Ear. While. I. Am. Trying. To. Use. Some. Private.
|
||
|
Time. To. Do. Mail.? She wanders out mumbling some kind of comment about
|
||
|
how pleasant I am, fifties still in-hand.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I just decided to update my livejournal but attech have cut us off
|
||
|
again. Fuck. Ohwell.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The GHz machine I'm putting together was riddled with dodgy CHSSI low-ESR
|
||
|
caps. I fired up the soldering iron and painstakingly replaced every
|
||
|
electrolytic cap on the board before setting it up for a week long test
|
||
|
run.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Meantime I left this at the end of the rant on the cat server.
|
||
|
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
Still with us? Well. Ok. It's April 21. I go to Melbourne on the 23rd and
|
||
|
plan to come back on the 29th.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There's a bigger rant coming (fools.txt) but this one is the little crumb
|
||
|
you get to look at instead of a 404 message.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The meaty stuff is: My neck is getting shittier. Bill the Lump invaded my
|
||
|
left jugular vein about a week ago, blocking it. If he'd invaded the
|
||
|
carotid I'd be stroked out, a dribbling veggie. I'm reasonably freaked out
|
||
|
about this. The axe is falling. So I'm planning my end mode. I want
|
||
|
control over it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
If you have anything terribly important to ask me about anything now might
|
||
|
be good time. The chance might not remain. Heavy epistemological and
|
||
|
philosophical questions are OK as are others.
|
||
|
|
||
|
-----------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
|
||
|
Someone asked me what is the meaning of life and how does she realise
|
||
|
it. I answered more or less that life was meaningless, but you could still
|
||
|
choose to dedicate your life to some purpose, and that how to
|
||
|
come up with the right purpose is to try lots of things. So if you never
|
||
|
find your purpose at least you've had a taste of lots of stuff. It was
|
||
|
more detailed than that.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got out to the airport in a cab. They have posters at the security desks
|
||
|
which say [We take security jokes very seriously. Offenders will be
|
||
|
prosecuted.] No sense of humour.. this from an airline with a name that
|
||
|
sounds like a bad porno movie, Virgin Blue. I wandered around the
|
||
|
terminal. I am surprised to discover the existance of a book called "The
|
||
|
Day My Bum Went Psycho". I was blind and half-naked when I went through
|
||
|
the scanner cos almost everything I own has metal in it. At the top of the
|
||
|
escalators some bryllcreemed shills offered me an AMEX gold card and I
|
||
|
told them I would not be a long term customer. The coffee in the lounge
|
||
|
was very good. I walked out on the tarmac, last person to board the plane.
|
||
|
I sat in the absolutely rearmost port seat, next to a guy who builds
|
||
|
wheelchairs for a living, chatting with him was fascinating. He said if ya
|
||
|
wanted to make a lot of money, come up with a way to prevent bedsores.
|
||
|
Dudes who sit in chairs for years get pressure sores on their bums 'cos
|
||
|
they dont use the muscle. So ... they get their ischial tuberosities
|
||
|
(bones you sit on) surgically cut down (ow! Holy shit). How to fix that?
|
||
|
Oh, I dunno, I said, I don't suppose people have thought of implanting
|
||
|
ceramic encapsulated magnets in people's arse-bones and opposite polarity
|
||
|
ones in the chair. Might save a few newtons. Though as my fellow passenger
|
||
|
pointed out it would be a bugger if ... you know... your arse demagnetised
|
||
|
your credit cards. Electric zaps in the bum might keep the muscle mass up
|
||
|
and if you're a quaddie you won't feel it anyway. We had some pretty
|
||
|
macabre conversations about his clientele. A lot of them come into his
|
||
|
service 'cos they tried to kill themselves and fucked it up and he
|
||
|
ventured the opinion that CO was the way to go and emission controls on
|
||
|
modern cars didn't matter to the final outcome. He was a very interesting
|
||
|
guy to talk to. Motorcyclist too. Had his leg massively fucked up and kept
|
||
|
it by sheer good luck of having a cluey ambo spot that his femoral artery
|
||
|
was kinked.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The plane was late, 'cos Melbourne was pissing rain. Flying over Melbourne
|
||
|
everything was brown and dead. Immediately after we landed <thud> the
|
||
|
cabin filled with the acrid, hydrochloric stench of baby puke. I got off
|
||
|
the plane and Ed was there to meet me. He has no beard, which surprised
|
||
|
me. We chatted about stuff while we waited for the baggage to come back
|
||
|
from the aircraft. It did, rained upon. We strode out to the carpark and
|
||
|
drove down the Tulla' freeway to Victoria Ranges. We were a bit early. So
|
||
|
we popped up the road to a purveyor of advanced chicken substitute and
|
||
|
gutzed ourselves before going back and blazing away with some .357 magnum
|
||
|
handguns at paper targets for a while.
|
||
|
|
||
|
He mentioned a friend of his who turned out to have an astrocytoma and was
|
||
|
being irradiated for it for a while before it came back viciously. I said
|
||
|
at least with my disease, I don't have to microwave my head. I remember
|
||
|
we were laughing a lot about this particular phrasing, with the rainwater
|
||
|
sluicing down the bluestone gutters and cars whizzing by us. He reckons
|
||
|
insulin was muttered about as a way to cleanly go out. Good quality
|
||
|
control, I reckon it'd be reliable, drive you into hypoglycemia, boom.
|
||
|
Pity you need a script.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I still have more horizontal wiggle in my grouping than vertical. My eye's
|
||
|
out but it was still pretty good shooting, lots of 8's, 9's and bullseyes.
|
||
|
They dont let people use 50-cal or .45 any more. I reckon I shot slightly
|
||
|
better than Ed but he was using double-action, whereas I cocked each round
|
||
|
myself. Cla-chick, BOOOM. Cla-chick, BOOOM. Lots of blast and flame. I
|
||
|
couldn't make out the numbers on the targets at 25m and was aiming by
|
||
|
interpolation. Fifty rounds. A truly desparate kamikazi would have capped
|
||
|
themselves right there, but I'm not. This is 'cos I feel like the
|
||
|
end-process is under control. Later my jacket stank of burnt gunpowder.
|
||
|
|
||
|
We drove out to Tooronga in the rain. Jane has grown a lot. She's a manga
|
||
|
chick. I had to laugh at reading Jhonen Vsquez's I FEEL SICK comic again
|
||
|
[Eat SHIT it's NEW!]. Her phrases are suffixed with terms like TradeMark,
|
||
|
Sigh, Snigger, when referring to just about everything, paragon of the
|
||
|
jaded teen. All the houses around Ed' place have been built in the last
|
||
|
few years... property boom. The place is crowded. To accommodate all this
|
||
|
the phone line is pair-gains, evil evil, evil. Telstra charge the
|
||
|
pair-gains user the same money for less bandwidth. SO modem linkages suck.
|
||
|
I'm typing on it now since I'm updating this bit of the file from
|
||
|
Melbourne.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I watched the Animatrix and Minority report and some manga anime of which
|
||
|
I made almost no sense at all. Mulholland drive made no sense at all
|
||
|
either. I come to Melbourne and whaddo I do?... watch telly when it
|
||
|
rains. We ate dinner at a teahouse in Box Hill. 1822 tea house, I think.
|
||
|
Yummie. No smokers.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I logged in. Yeah. Joss expects I probably pissed Jude and Soph off. Ow.
|
||
|
Her emails aren't terse in a reassuring way. I dunno why yet.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Saturday I bought a bottle of Clock Tower. Good stuff. Ed and I
|
||
|
headded out to the Chamber but didnt go in, the vehicle tracks suggested
|
||
|
all the gear had been moved elsewhere. The barbecque was cancelled too. I
|
||
|
hadn't seen his wife Faye for years, she's been in a chair for about a
|
||
|
decade from MS. I'da capped myself if I knew that future awaited me, I
|
||
|
said to Ed. The clannies had moved to the abuttments of Bingle St Bridge
|
||
|
(we have keys to 'em). Syd clan was sleeping in the opposite end to the
|
||
|
one in which the parry was being held. MrI had managed to pinch
|
||
|
electrickery from the street lighting to power the lights and video
|
||
|
projector - the party was held in two rooms with a camera in one and a
|
||
|
projector in the other, which had the advantage that you could throw
|
||
|
things at, draw on, make rude shadows against, the projected image of the
|
||
|
Master of Ceremonies and they didn't know or feel a thing. The rooms were
|
||
|
carpetted and vaccuumed! There must have been oh, 70 people in attendance.
|
||
|
The confined rooms were full of assholes smoking (thought that paled into
|
||
|
insignificace against the choking billows of smoke from the fireworks
|
||
|
later) plus a bunch of other people. If you need an image of organised
|
||
|
crime, this ain't it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Some people I'd not seen for many years were there under newly receded
|
||
|
hairlines or encased in flabbier bodies than I remember. Ug, Mira, Bob,
|
||
|
Wes The Source, Juxtapose from Ad-delayed. Prowler got gold, narrowly
|
||
|
beating Cro, bless him! I got a lot of votes for the gold, but it's not
|
||
|
because I've done anything. Through my alhocolic haze I realised I was
|
||
|
getting votes 'cos I am dying, which is an odd way to skew an election.
|
||
|
Dougo sold vegetarian saussages in the corner. I was given a [REAL CAVE
|
||
|
CLAN] t-shirt. Pipewalkers showed up and I introduced myself... it's odd
|
||
|
how these kids are barely into their twenties, and are already on five
|
||
|
year good behaviour bonds, and have seen my discreet little tag all over
|
||
|
Melbourne. Clocktower is a funny name for a drink which makes you lose
|
||
|
track of time. I gutzed it all. Dell-dint popped a goodly bud in my mouth
|
||
|
while I was well pissed and horizontal on some milk crates. When the
|
||
|
alcohol wore off the bud kicked in very well indeed. She gave me a bag of
|
||
|
'shrooms which I think would best be taken back to Sydney and cultivated
|
||
|
from spore.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ya gotta love that. I staggered down to the other end of the bridge at
|
||
|
about 4am when the party died. I slept in the corner on a bit of carpet,
|
||
|
amidst some abandoned, slightly gritty pieces of pizza which i ate when i
|
||
|
woke up. I woke up and picked a chunk of glass out of my knee. There'da
|
||
|
been thirty people sleeping in there, packed like sardines. The clan awoke
|
||
|
and we hit somewhere in South Melbourne for breakfast. They hooned off the
|
||
|
explore the old Chevron and I got a train out to westgarth. They do a
|
||
|
great job hiding information about the trains on the platforms tho they
|
||
|
apparently use SMSs to inform commuters about the train times which is
|
||
|
pretty cool. R walked up the road to greet me. We watched some somber
|
||
|
9/11 videos and ate tomato soup before I plodded back to Clifton Hill
|
||
|
station via the Merri creek. The trains were stuffed. They put LED
|
||
|
displays inside the train but they dont tell you anything useful. [Welcome
|
||
|
to connex] over and over. It gets a bit thin when you've seen it a couple
|
||
|
of hundred times and the train doesnt go anyplace.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Another thought, as I type on Monday 26th. I brought a camera and have
|
||
|
hardly used it at all. It dawns on me that this is because I'm not gonna
|
||
|
be here to look at the photos I take. I can think of why other people'd
|
||
|
wanna look at my photos. What an indictment it is that the only thing
|
||
|
comeplling about my life is that I get a slightly nonmundane way out of
|
||
|
it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Monday we saw the minesweeper at Williamstown (closed), went to Brunswick
|
||
|
street. We checked out the Polyester bookshop, and I'da blown a couple of
|
||
|
hundred bux in there but I didn't know if I was gonna live long enough to
|
||
|
read all the stuff I'd get. They have extremely rude postcards, they'd
|
||
|
never get through the post.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's been a scary couple of weeks. While at Polyester I got a copy of
|
||
|
Death, A User's Guide. Which isn't especially useful, I shouldda got a
|
||
|
copy of that book they had which was a compendium of the final
|
||
|
conversations between pilots, taken from black box flight recorders dug
|
||
|
out of various debris-strewn craters and mountainsides around the world. I
|
||
|
flicked through it. Some of these people were very, very fuckin' cool just
|
||
|
before they got plowed into the earth at 400km/h, in a way which I don't
|
||
|
think I would be. But maybe it's 'cos they didn't know they were about to
|
||
|
be mashed into cytosol paste.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Didja ever see Event Horizon (it has Lawrence Fishburne in it, which makes
|
||
|
it worth seeing)? Check out the scene where the trauma specialist dude
|
||
|
finally discovers the bomb with four seconds left on the countdown
|
||
|
display. He gets the exactly right expression on his face, which documents
|
||
|
the simultaneous realisation that you're fucked and theres no time to do
|
||
|
anything about it, Kaboom.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Why's this shit gotta happen to me?!" - crewman on outside of Lewis and
|
||
|
Clark when it blows up (this is actually a very funny scene), Event Horizon
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Chatting to Ed was good. I have heavy conversations with certain people
|
||
|
from time to time and this was one of them. We sucked coffee from the only
|
||
|
two tall mugs in the shop. It struck me that I was sitting in front of a
|
||
|
dude nearly twice my age and by dying I was gonna miss out on my current
|
||
|
total lifespan's worth of additional life experience. I got half a
|
||
|
lifespan. I don't feel especially ripped off, 'cos I don't know precisely
|
||
|
what I'm gonna miss. Ed is cool. I like Ed 'cos he listens and has good
|
||
|
bandwidth and tends to be perceptive in interesting ways, giving him a
|
||
|
high clue density where it counts, and he's stashed a lot of life
|
||
|
experience in that head of his. I love it every time he says he became a
|
||
|
hippy and smoked a ton of dope and this cured his ambition. He's been a
|
||
|
shaping influence on my life. I never really had ambition, which is maybe
|
||
|
why I've not felt a particular need to smoke dope.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The leather shop up the road had interesting chain mail, floggers, gags,
|
||
|
surgical tools, speculums, spiky bits of leather. It's a kinky world, if
|
||
|
you can afford it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ed's learning Japanese which is absolutely fucking baroque, it's like
|
||
|
someone set out to come up with an indecipherable cryptosystemic alphabet
|
||
|
and this was the result. It can't handle consecutive consonants. Predator
|
||
|
in hiragani sounds something like Po re da to ru. Transistor sounds
|
||
|
something like To Ra Na Si To Ru. We ate out at a Chinese restaurant that
|
||
|
night and en-route found a nice microwave oven in a dumpster. On the way
|
||
|
home I amused myself yelling TO RA NA SI TO RU out the car window at
|
||
|
random passersby in Swinburne.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got an email from Fleischman, from whom I have not heard in oh, five
|
||
|
years. I'm, thinking of of using him as my control subject to see what
|
||
|
happens when I don't tell people I'm dying.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I read a copy of Fight Club. It makes me wanna go and check out these
|
||
|
support groups people go to for their impending mortal disease. Just to
|
||
|
see how other people handle, or fail, to handle it. Further reading of
|
||
|
Death A Users Guide suggests it isn't much guidance, really. It
|
||
|
does list some ugly deaths in there. I'm getting out the easy way.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Tues: Melbourne Museum... they have millions of cool bugs, many of them
|
||
|
alive and fighting with each other behind glass. In the galleria is a blue
|
||
|
whale skeleton, stripped bare, the tonnage of massive bones hanging
|
||
|
motionless, speaking of an organism which was shaped to withstand massive
|
||
|
hydrostatic forces and swim with minimum effort through a dense medium.
|
||
|
They also have huuuuge dinosaur skeleta which are very impressive. Dead
|
||
|
things stay dead for a long time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Walk through the forest section sometime later. Excellent little frogs
|
||
|
hide in places difficult to catch with the eye. It amuses me to think that
|
||
|
what we do to nonhuman sporting heros in Australia is send their skeletons
|
||
|
to Canberra, their viscera to New Zealand, and we stuff the rest and mount
|
||
|
it in a glass case in the museum at Melbourne. Can someone please do that
|
||
|
to oh, I dunno, Darryl Eastlake? He's not a sporting hero but he satisfies
|
||
|
the other criteria. And he's HUUUGE.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Tues arvo we went to check out the Chamber at Melbourne. A huge drain
|
||
|
room, under Prahran, where the Clannies has been held for the last ten
|
||
|
years. This is in several ways the spiritual home of the Clan. I've slept
|
||
|
here many nights. Some of my tags survive from 1991, but others have been
|
||
|
painted over. The Clan has a lossy memory in this regard. The graffiti is
|
||
|
good. On the high part of the wall there are painted six commemorative
|
||
|
white patches with names of dead Clan people in them. Mullet, Favero,
|
||
|
Aspro, Cougar. Mullet was the last to die, nearly ten years ago. I am
|
||
|
next. The sign which said "WARNING: This drain subject to Cave Clan" has
|
||
|
been pilfered.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Wed: CSIRAC!! Thanks Dave Dumant and R for twisting his arm. He met us
|
||
|
wednesday morning and took us to see the exhibit. Built in 1948. Fourth
|
||
|
programmable electronic computer in the world.
|
||
|
|
||
|
When you are convinced, as I am, that biology is computational in nature,
|
||
|
then an exhibit like this becomes much more than a historical curiosity.
|
||
|
It's a monument to humanity's intellectual puberty, a milestone along the
|
||
|
path we slowly trod en-route to _knowing ourselves_. I have snippets in my
|
||
|
head from looking at it. There's lots of 19" rackmount chassis, corroded
|
||
|
metal. Needle gagues. Blinking lights (forever extinguished, it will never
|
||
|
be turned on again) for the many registers. Selenium plate rectifiers and
|
||
|
big fat transformers. Lots and lots of valves in octal mounting bases, all
|
||
|
cleaned and gleeeeaming. Mercury tube, delay line memory in a metal box.
|
||
|
Forced air cooling. Big fat old capacitors (printed circuits hadn't been
|
||
|
invented yet). Wirewound resistors with their ceramic packing falling off.
|
||
|
Punched tape feeds. Not a diode or a transistor anywhere. Six small CRO
|
||
|
screens. All components hand-soldered, the wires meticulously hand-routed.
|
||
|
I couldn't escape the feeling I was walking around inside a machine
|
||
|
different to other machines I've crawled through... crawl through engines,
|
||
|
printing presses, brick kilns, power station switchyards, production lines
|
||
|
for anything you care to name, they lack something, which is the reek of
|
||
|
engineering complexity only required for some kind of a brain, and I have
|
||
|
detected this reek in only one other place, which is a roomful of old
|
||
|
telephone exchange switchgear, with rows of delaminating relays. I touched
|
||
|
its chassis metal when nobody was looking, which was sort of naughty of
|
||
|
me. When you get close to it you can smell the sour tang of capacitor
|
||
|
electrolyte, the volatile monomers from the depolymerising insulation on
|
||
|
the wires, the faint tang of phenol seeping out of the valve bases. It's
|
||
|
mostly surrounded by thick glass, very clean, so when I went to look
|
||
|
closely at some parts of it my head went BOONK against the clear panes.
|
||
|
Runs at 0.5 milliMIPs. Ed used to program this thing and he's outlasted
|
||
|
it. It used shift registers and barrel rotators just like modern
|
||
|
CPU's. Pulled 20,000 watts. I am glad I have seen it.
|
||
|
|
||
|
They had an inspirin selection of human anatomy bits in other exhibits,
|
||
|
too.
|
||
|
|
||
|
After seeing CSIRAC we went down to the Spotswood pumping station. Huge
|
||
|
old coalfired 3-stage condensing reciprocal steam engines, which pumped
|
||
|
Melburnian shit for decades, still stand majestically in the pumping
|
||
|
station, also gleeeeeaming as museum pieces do. Lots of other fun stuff
|
||
|
there, too... hand-pumpable compressors (white man's magic, Ed calls it),
|
||
|
weirdo optical illusion toys, really old pipes made of massive cast-iron
|
||
|
sections. I watched the kids running around in the playground. Spoke to Ed
|
||
|
on the acoustic dish - he's better at finding the focus then I am.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I said goodbye to Dougo. He said he never expected that the next name on
|
||
|
the wall in the Chamber might be mine. We both have grey hair. Odd
|
||
|
coincidence #47271, my parents' dog and his dog are both named Chloe. He
|
||
|
asked if I wanted to see an old flame of mine, Karla, but I said I dunno
|
||
|
what I'd say to her. I walked back to Ed's place from Dougo's, walking
|
||
|
past a traffic jam which stretched all the way from Tooronga to Glen Iris.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Based on how they checked me at Kingsford Smith I decided to gutz the
|
||
|
'shrooms before I went to Sydney, and take the spores north to
|
||
|
characterise whatever this stuff was.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thurs:
|
||
|
|
||
|
I didn't have any 2,4-paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde handy so I thought
|
||
|
fuck it, eat 'em and at midnight I ate the 'shrooms. I felt nothing. Maybe
|
||
|
I need more. Maybe they were bullshit shrooms with no active ingredient.
|
||
|
So I'll be probably moving a load of regular mushroom spores north for no
|
||
|
reason at all. Tosser.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Ed and Jane saw me off at Tulla'. I'm not especially good at goodbyes so I
|
||
|
sorta hugged 'em and scanned my ticket myself, turned to wave at 'em
|
||
|
over the crowd and disappeared down the corridor.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got back to Sydney, a load of spores stashed somewhere in my stuff, and
|
||
|
got a cab back home.
|
||
|
|
||
|
In the post came the bequeathal form, from the UNSW anatomy department, to
|
||
|
whom I also made enquiries about donating my body. It was clearly, and
|
||
|
plainly, addressed to me. Dad had opened it. For fuck's sake. Ten years
|
||
|
ago when I left home one of the reasons I did it was because he didn't pay
|
||
|
attention to the name on the envelopes which would arrive in the post, and
|
||
|
since we have the same first initial he ended up reading a lot of my
|
||
|
stuff. You know... letters from early flames, fines for dodging fares on
|
||
|
the train, that sort of shit. I suspect he won't do it again... but it's a
|
||
|
hard way to learn. He claims he didn't read it - but how would he know not
|
||
|
to read it if he hadn't read enough of it to know what it was about?
|
||
|
He's bullshitting me. I think I'll send myself some mail, saying, don't
|
||
|
read my fuckin' mail, dad, until he gets the idea.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Natch, there's a catch. If I smack myself out, then the anatomy department
|
||
|
can't have the bod 'cos the coroner'll want to chop it up in a postmortem
|
||
|
exam 'cos it'll be a suspicious death. Fuck!! Does getting dead the way
|
||
|
I want have to be so fuckin' goddamned complicated?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Joss, it turns out, is not quite free, even tho she's on the far side of
|
||
|
the planet to Azza. The 'net provides them with a way to engage in what I
|
||
|
deduce to be vicious flame wars, which must be sort of like duelling with
|
||
|
rocket launchers at fifteen million paces. I don't know which eastern
|
||
|
philosopher came up with the insight that you only truly know someone when
|
||
|
you fight them, but whoever it was left out that there are some lessons
|
||
|
which will kill you.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
I got a strange email from a friend of Cookie's, who's survived cancer,
|
||
|
twice. The email which prompted it was even odder.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's all about how I'm gonna have to find some reason to fight for my life.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Life is full of problems, and here's the remedy-
|
||
|
Denial works for me.
|
||
|
There's a freight train coming, loaded with anxiety,
|
||
|
you're tied to the tracks? Don't worry.
|
||
|
Denial works for me.
|
||
|
Flood, famine, pestilence, they're all yuckie.
|
||
|
You can let Moses out to the promised land,
|
||
|
Denial works for me.
|
||
|
Why put off till tomorrow, responsibilities?
|
||
|
They'll just come back to haunt you -
|
||
|
Ignore them totally."
|
||
|
|
||
|
TISM - Denial works for me - www.tism.wanker.com
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sez I'm intellectualizing it. Well, fuck me! FUCK! I didn't spend years
|
||
|
learning how all this shit works to just retreat into a happy,
|
||
|
emotionally-powered ignorance about it when it came into my life. I don't
|
||
|
maintain this expensive veneer of neocortex so that I can just turn it off
|
||
|
and default to gorilla mode when shit hits the fan. My thinking organ
|
||
|
tells me it's only a matter of time.
|
||
|
|
||
|
I _know_ there isn't anything romantic about dying young or dying at all
|
||
|
you old prick, I want to say to the dude, but there's no point. Yeah, ok
|
||
|
so when the mets become uncontrollable, I'm getting out and a bunch of
|
||
|
people are gonna be pissed off that I decided not to hang around, in the
|
||
|
face of a protracted, stupid messy end. I can't even say sorry about that
|
||
|
with any conviction... you can't say sorry for something in advance of
|
||
|
going right ahead and doing it, with any honesty. Well, reader. Does it
|
||
|
make you uncomfortable that by deciding that my life is meaningless and
|
||
|
abandonable, I also imply that your life is meaningless and abandonable
|
||
|
too? I'm resigned BECAUSE that's the only way to maintain any control over
|
||
|
myself. I would go absolutely, stark raving, motherfucking, head banging,
|
||
|
shithouse-rat-in-a-washing-machine-on-spin-cycle berserk if I thought it'd
|
||
|
do the least amount of good. It won't do the least amount of good and in
|
||
|
fact will probably make a lot of mess. So I'm not. I'm not being brave; I
|
||
|
run from the cops, I hide from responsibility and I'd do both with this
|
||
|
disease but this is inside my goddamned body so there's no place to go and
|
||
|
no point trying to get there. Yelling at the doctors won't help. They've
|
||
|
heard all this stuff before. I'm not being brave. I'm just being. Let me
|
||
|
be.
|
||
|
|
||
|
"Life kills. Life kills.
|
||
|
Life's a sentence.
|
||
|
Read all about it."
|
||
|
-TISM (Life Kills) from the Hot Dogma album.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's being claimed by someone close to me that I'm milkin' people for
|
||
|
sympathy. So I'll come clean. Yeah. Look. If sympathy came in casks I'd
|
||
|
steal a pallet of 'em, nah, fuck it, a railway car... wait, no, a crude
|
||
|
oil tanker... ar, what the heck if it's too big to land on earth, a small
|
||
|
moon full of it, and go get permanently wasted, swim in the stuff, snort
|
||
|
it, shoot it up, drown in it. Sympathy's a cheap drug, knock it if you
|
||
|
like but it's good for what it's good for. It deludes me into feeling like
|
||
|
I'm not doing this totally alone. Even if people can't, won't or don't
|
||
|
actually give a shit it helps maintain the illusion that some of them do.
|
||
|
I'll take three courses. And the garnish. It's wafer thin, Mr Creosote.
|
||
|
Fuck it. It's not great, it obviously doesn't fix anything. It obviously
|
||
|
won't cure me, and I am not asking it to cure me. It sort of keeps me a
|
||
|
bit sane, ya know? Live for .... what, exactly? Go on. Somebody. Anybody.
|
||
|
Tell me why you think I should hang around. Think hard. If you have any
|
||
|
suggestions they had better be good, otherwise shuddup. I know the price
|
||
|
of being sorry for myself will be my life but I think that payment is
|
||
|
already a done deal so I might as well gulp it down wherever it's on-tap.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Live in me for a moment and talk to bill about it. Try and negotiate with
|
||
|
bill. See if bill gives a shit if I twiddle my emotional knob from despair
|
||
|
to elation, or go to the effort of chopping up one of his outposts only to
|
||
|
succumb to hundreds of others. Dylan Thomas, or whatever long-dead wanker
|
||
|
came up with it, might have you believe you should fight the fading of the
|
||
|
light (yeah man, like, my approach was always to bring a spare torch, see
|
||
|
my police service charge sheet) but there are times when it just makes
|
||
|
good sense to lie down, punch a cannula into yourself and die a
|
||
|
chilled-out, sensible death. Does it matter if chickens chicken out, or
|
||
|
cluck'n'scratch right to the end, in the chicken processing factory?
|
||
|
B'gerk bwaark cluck cluck POW. No, not a shit. Pass the drumsticks.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There are some lessons which will kill you.
|
||
|
|
||
|
[You may seriously injure or kill yourself with this device].
|
||
|
|
||
|
Grr. Grr. Grrrr. Who's. Mister. Fucking. Grumpy. Pants. Where's the
|
||
|
circular saw...?
|
||
|
|
||
|
------
|
||
|
|
||
|
The smack is proving harder to procure than I thought. I'm gonna try
|
||
|
another channel.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's May the first. I spent today chopping wood and walking the dog and
|
||
|
writing the remnants of this rant. The circular saw needed some work so I
|
||
|
did that, and chopped a lot of the wood I dragged home in the last few
|
||
|
months. The saw is really loud and sprays sawdust everywhere, a kilowatt
|
||
|
stashed in a disc of whirling wolfram carbide, a productive, controlled
|
||
|
catastrophe. It was good to sit in front of the fire. The room smells of
|
||
|
burnt tree now the fire has gone out.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The next rant's starting soon. To mark the day I'll call the next file
|
||
|
mayday.txt and it'll be out in June, if I can be fucked. I'll be 33 by
|
||
|
then if I make it there.
|
||
|
|
||
|
The whole sequence is:
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/consent.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/gutful.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/gutting.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/gutted.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/hunting.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/bill_me.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/getting_it.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/losing_it.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/ides.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/march.txt
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/foolish.txt (included in this file)
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/fools.txt (you're looking at it)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Geez I'm a gasbag.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Oh yeah, I scanned my MRI from november 2003, finally. Meet the father of
|
||
|
all my metastases:
|
||
|
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/psycho_kidney_MRI.png
|
||
|
|
||
|
If you cant see it email me and I'll make it available as a jpeg at
|
||
|
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/psycho_kidney_MRI.jpg
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
The next file will be:
|
||
|
http://conway.cat.org.au/~predator/mayday.txt (is yet to come)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Put yer winter woolies on. It's getting cold.
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
<predator>
|