God, I Love Science!!!

Sheep Drugged and Shocked to Prove Taser Safety

Seriously. Go read it for yourself.

Now, while I admit that I have no particular desire to teach sheep to freebase and then go all Tasermatic on their sheepy asses, there's a certain wild-eyed enthusiasm to this whole project that I find fundamentally admirable. Who came up with this idea? More importantly, who did they find to implement it? It goes to show: we may live in a modern world, but there's still a job for Igor whenver he needs it. Because who else could you possibly call upon to make sheep snort meth, then apply the lightning rod to their woolly butts if not that most tried and tested of all B-movie stereotypes: the Mad Scientist's Equally Mad Assistant.

Look, I know this whole thing is awfully hard on the sheep, but as a longtime fan of B-movies, I can't help but approve. In my youth, I often envisioned myself as a Victor Frankenstein for a new age. I liked Science. I liked weird stuff. I liked mixing chemicals until they changed colour and smelled funny (and made the cat fall over). I liked explosions and lightning. At no point have I ever been concerned with the idea that there are Some Things Man Wasn't Meant To Know. I have wild hair. I can cackle maniacally.

There really ought to be a useful place for me in the world of science. And now, thanks to this... clearly VERY scientific project, it is apparent that somewhere, somehow, Mad Science is still happening. Could it be that at last, at long last, my project to crossbreed magpies and tiger sharks has a future?

Could Have Been Worse, Apparently

Not pneumonia. That's good.

Bronchitis. That's... not so good.

The good is that I'll probably not have to be hospitalised. The not so good is two weeks worth of doxycycline... and the lingering question of why the f__k I can't cough up all this crap the way normal people do.

Referral to a respiratory physician coming up.

There May Be A Hiatus

Yeah.

So - this cough isn't going anywhere. Except downhill. Bad night last night. Not a good morning so far. I'll be taking this one to the doctors today, and I gotta say I won't be surprised if they want to keep me for a while.

I'll be back when I can.

Diseases

First, mine: this whole lung thing is starting to worry me. There's a strain of pneumonia doing the rounds hereabouts. I'm feeling like utter shit. I'm still afebrile, but I'm given to understand there's been a case or two similar to that recently. There's only two things keeping me from heading down to the surgery. First, I'm still goddam sole parent until Sunday. And second: I can still walk up and down the hills here without falling over.

That suggests the pain and coughing are all about inflamed bronchial pathways, not fluid in the lungs and other pneumonia-type problems. So I'll drop another handful of paracetamol and ibuprofen tonight, have a hot shower, and grab a few hours of broken sleep with my head propped up on two or three pillows in the hopes of breathing just a little better.

Fuck this shit.

Second disease? Oh, that would be Fred Nile -- the NSW parliamentary equivalent of a big, fat herpes sore. Here's his latest:

Wong Baby Not Right

The man is an absolute dick. Penny Wong and her partner are having a kid - and he goes on and on about the wrongness of children in a gay relationship. What a set of standards, eh? Can't have a kid in a gay relationship, even if one of the parents is a Federal minister. But it's okay for a world-spanning organisation of paedophiles and their enablers to go on running schools, right?

I think I've come up with a good plan for dealing with Fred. What we need to do is put our pennies together, and raise a large sum of money. This money is to be paid in the form of a bounty. It goes to the first brave, heroic Sydney drag queen who manages to get footage of himself giving our Reverend Fred the blowjob (or other sexual thrill) of his life.

That ought to just about shut him down, no? So - how do we go about starting up a charity, then?

Urgh

Genghis' pet chest infection is leaving him. I didn't have to drug him at all last night. He coughed for a while after he lay down, but then he went off to sleep nicely and stayed that way.

Wish I could say the same. It would appear I'm still on the downslope of this particular bit of nastiness. I'm not enjoying the situation at all.

We took a trip to Launceston yesterday to see 'Captain America'. I'd rate it one of the best superhero flicks so far. The look was perfect, the acting was fine, and Hugo Weaving made a most excellent Red Skull. And who can argue with a story about Nazi super-science and lost Asgardian technology threatening to destroy the world?

There really was a lot to like in the film. If you're an old Marvel fan, watching Captain America hook up with the likes of Dum-Dum Dugan and a young Nick Fury (from a very old comic called 'Nick Fury and his Howling Commandoes') was pretty cool. I admit to a warm, fuzzy moment when Dugan took over the zap-ray tank during the escape-from-Hydra sequence, purely because of the cry of "Waaahoooo!!!". I don't think I've seen one of those old comics since I was about seven or eight years old...

They did well with 'Bucky' Barnes, too. A sneaky, fun moment when Captain America features in the scope of a sniper rifle... then the scope climbs, finds another sniper about to shoot our hero; the trigger of our POV scope is pulled and the sniper onscreen dies, then the camera pulls back to reveal 'Bucky' behind the scope of 'our' rifle, and a quick thank-you wave from Captain America. Shades of the Winter Soldier and the 'Death of Captain America' plotline from a few years back.

And a bit of respect for film history: Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull, unearthing his Asgardian toy. He says something like "...while the Fuehrer plays in Northern Africa, digging for trinkets, I have found this..." Heh. Anybody remember a movie where Nazis in Northern Africa were trying to dig up an item of Great Magic Power? Nice touch.

Genghis and I did not travel alone to the cinemas, however. We took with us the redoubtable Baggins sisters (Not their actual name. It's an in-joke that they'll understand if they read this. Hi April! Hi Amy!) and the eldest of the Viking Neighbour clan to round out the expedition. A trip to my favourite secondhand book store made things even better. I found a compendium of the first fifteen Marvel 'Godzilla' comics in a single cover, still in its shrinkwrap. That may not seem like much a find to you - but then you don't have a daughter who thinks Godzilla is the greatest thing ever to reach cinema. Said daughter has a birthday coming in about a week - so a mint, unopened Godzilla compendium is a Huge Goddam Score. I'm really rockin' the dad thing here.

We had another Skype attack from Natalie and Jake last night. It went... marginally better than the last one. (The Mau-mau did not stand up, lift up her dress, and scream "Booooooobies" at the camera this time. I count that as progress.) Our farflung family members are apparently in a backpacking hostel in Galway. They affirm that the place is nice, and everybody's friendly, and they're having a good time. The bastards.

Anyway, today the rain is closing in cold and grey, and I have three extra kids in the house. Genghis and one of the Viking Neighbour kids are taking apart the clothesdryer that died. The Mau-mau and the Double-trouble daughter have got out "The Craft Box" (a big cardboard box full of pipecleaners, tassles, string, paddlepop sticks, glue, crayons, paper, cardboard and all kinds of similar epic shit) and are making a fucknormous -- but very creative -- mess on the dining table. The eldest Double-Trouble child is slouching about aimlessly.

Soon I shall have to feed them all. Best I conclude this now.

Not The Best Of Days

Genghis has got some kind of vile chest infection thing; a cough which is ramping up his asthma. It isn't really slowing him down or anything. (I'm not sure what would do that.) But it does tend to make him cough horribly at night.

Horribly. As in: parent lies awake upstairs, cringing and anticipating the next bark. To top it off, he's given a version of it to me, so I'm kind of wheezy and unwell too. Not good. So, last night -- no sleep until about 0300. Awake again by 0630 in anticipation of getting kids on track for the day. And I recall waking up and seeing the clock at 0430, so it was pretty shitty sleep. All three and a half hours of it.

The clothesdryer has died, too. Not a simple, repairable death. What we have here is not a mere worn belt, or a broken heating element. Nope: the drum is literally off its rails. Normally, that central drum kind of 'floats', on some sort of shock absorbers, and spins fairly freely. Lately, I've noticed a tendency to get stuck, but I could get it going if I just reached in and gave it a spin.

Today? Nope. Dead. The drum is sitting low, and I can barely get it to turn. I think the mounts or the bearings or whatever have given up. You can hear the motor hum in frustration, and you can feel the heat from the element, but the drum steadfastly does not turn. Most irritating, since we've drifted into that phase of winter in which it's pretty much cloudy and showery every goddam day.

So tomorrow, I shall pull out the old dryer, and put it in the top shed. Genghis can take it apart over the weekend. He'll enjoy that. I shall then hitch up the trailer, head down to Scottsdale, and pay off the new dryer I've already picked out. The last one did its work for something like seven or eight years. Hopefully the new one will manage at least as much, once I bring it back up the hill and wrangle it into place. Yay.

Hitching up the trailer will serve a double purpose. I'm currently building a nice fire-pit with a stone retaining wall. To do that, you dig a Flogging Great Hole, and then level the bottom with a good, thick layer of gravel. You lay an inner cylinder of heat-resistant brick to the requisite height, and then for cosmetic purposes, you build a nice outer cylinder of fieldstone and mortar, and finally you level the top with some slates, or the like. (Not a good idea just to build the structure out of fieldstone. Repeated heating and cooling can lead not just to cracking, but with some kinds of stone, random exploding. We don't want that. No. Hence the inner cylinder.)

I dug the hole. I got myself some gravel. I placed it in the hole and levelled it. Then I lay my first ring of heat-resistant brick... and realised there wasn't quite enough room between the brick and the walls of the hole to build my fieldstone cylinder.

No sense fighting it. I pulled out my first layer of brick, and then I widened the entire goddam hole, and dug out all the gravel. So tomorrow I have to take the trailer to some gravel-supply folks, get a decent load aboard, then come back so I can re-gravel and re-level my pit. Then I can at least get through laying the heat-resistant stuff down, I hope.

Genghis. That kid kills me. We came back from ju-jitsu class, picked up the Mau-mau from the Viking Neighbour Clan, and went home. I threw some marinated diced lamb under the grill, made a quick salad, and served up flatbread with a nice yoghurt/mint sauce, plus the salad and the lamb. Healthy, tasty, and quick.

So I'm sitting there, enjoying a bit of well-deserved dinner. The Mau-mau is staring at hers fearfully, as though it's going to attack her. This is her standard approach to dinner. Food seems to frighten and dismay her, unless it's spaghetti, pizza or chocolate. Those she understands.

Anyway, I'm trying to encourage her to eat, when I hear an almighty racket from Genghis. He's stuffing salad into his mouth, but he's shrieking "Nooooo! Noooo!".

I'm not stupid. I didn't ask. I just watched him.

Apparently, he'd decided that he was a fiercenormous gigantic monster, and the salad was a crowd of innocent little creatures he was devouring. The shrieks of "No! NOOOOO! Look out! Don't eat us! Aaaarrghhmmmkmffmfgrmgrmgrrmmchomp!" were... kind of disturbing.

But I figured he was eating, at least. Shovelling it away by the handful, even as it screamed for mercy... if only I could convince the Mau-mau to do something similar.

Wow. I am sooooo tired.

Sole Parent Saga Continues

It's kind of hard to get shit done when you're on Sole Parent Duty. The writing is not moving well. Every time I turn around, I'm either playing chauffeur, or cook, or just cleaning and motivating and suchlike. Bah.

Winter weather is doing its thing. Ironically, it got a lot warmer just about the time Natalie left. She's been whining for months about the cold, and to be fair, up until Wednesday last week, we were having an unusually bitter winter. However, the moment she left on holiday, things reverted to the typical mild, damp Tasmanian winter. I've kicked off half the covers, and young Genghis told me this morning that he tried sleeping on the floor last night because he got too hot with the cats in his bed.

Of course, one has to wonder why he didn't throw the cats off. But wondering would do no good at all. Genghis is the kid who created the Rhino of the Twilight, and often wonders what the world would be like if God was a great big chicken. For him, no doubt it's much more rational to climb out of bed and sleep on the floor to escape the excessive warmth of cats.

Certainly his sister would think differently. I had them strip their beds today so I could change the sheets. When I went into the Mau-mau's room with the fresh bedding, I found I was walking over... something. Little hard lumps of something on the carpet.

I knelt, and looked closely. Cat food. Dry cat food.

Hmm.

I called the Mau-mau. "Why is there cat food on the floor?"

"I don't know," she said. Not unexpectedly.

"Why did you put cat food in your bed?" I figured a quick change of tack might shake her.

"I didn't," she said.

At that point, I allowed myself to play Angry Dad. I snapped at her, cutting her off, and told her flatly that she was lying. I did so because I'd worked out what was going on.

"I'm not," she said. And if I didn't know better, it might have been convincing.

"You wanted the cat to climb on your bed," I told her. "So you put cat food up there. But when you took the sheets off, the cat food fell on the floor."

And that was it. She crumbled, and admitted she'd been trying to get the cat to sleep on her bed. I told her off sharply for lying, and made her clean up the cat food. Frankly, I'm just glad we only give the cats kitty-crunchies... I have no doubt at all the Mau-mau would quite happily have put a big, wet bowl of sloppy cat food on the end of her bed if she thought it would attract the cats.

Anyway. I've worked my way through the laundry. I've run the pump, and organised firewood. I spent half the weekend taking Genghis to lessons and running errands in Launceston, and the other half helping look after spare Double-Trouble kids.

Oh -- that ended well, actually. I had a new computer monitor for the Double-Troubles, plus drivers for a USB wifi aerial, so I thought I'd load both the Double-Troubles and my two kids in the car and head out to Bridport to return the non-Flintharts to their lair. When I got there, I was able to help figure out the reason for patches of mould on the ceilings. I theorised that perhaps the insulation in the ceiling was incomplete, leading to cold patches on the interior where breath/vapour could condense, allowing mould to grow. Once the theory was devised, I despatched the eldest Double-Trouble kid into their ceiling crawlspaces - and voila! Problem identified! All they really need to do is organise to fill in the missing patches of insulation, and the Mystery of the Ceiling Blotches should resolve.

Even better: the Double-Trouble matriarch told me that a new restaurant in Scottsdale actually had a woodfire pizza oven... so Genghis and the Mau-mau and I put it to the test on our way home. Hooray! It was quite a decent bit of pizza, and thus I didn't have to cook for the evening. Better stil, there was enough left over for lunches the next day...

And finally: tonight, a quick phone call from Natalie, in Ireland. She's managed to get sunburned, which is kind of impressive. More impressive, though, was the fact that she was calling from the Jameson distillery, and wanted me to tell her what I wanted.

"Something interesting and reasonably expensive," I said.

I wonder what she's going to buy?