Strange Omens

What kind of omens are these?

A few days ago I am at the corner shop getting a pint of milk, not my usual corner shop as I am in a hurry and don't have the time to walk the 2 extra blocks to the better shop, no, I am in the crackhead store and there is a crazy woman screaming at the poor girl behind the counter.

"5 DOLLARS, MOTHERFUCKER YOU OWE ME 5 DOLLARS!".

I avoid eye contact with the nutty person and pay for my milk and leave. I am a bit freaked out by having witnessed the confrontation in the store and I have decided to cross the road right where I stand as opposed to walking to the pedestrian crossing.

I look both ways, wait a moment for a car to pass then step out into the road. A moment later my foot lands in something squelchy. I'm thinking: "Fuck, I just stood in dogshit".

I look down. It is a dead cat.

It has been run over a few times and it's insides have exploded all over the road. There is a bit of blood on my shoe but thankfully no guts. I almost add to the poor cat's problems by puking on it right there.

Instead I give a little girly scream and start walking fast towards the house.

I am shaking as I get there, thinking: "Holy Crap, I could have stepped anywhere, it's a wide road and a few inches in any direction and I would have been blind enough to step around the cat without even noticing it! Instead I stepped right in the poor bastard!".

I start feeling like this is some kind of omen, someone is trying to tell me something, I start having visions of crows landing on telegraph poles outside the window of a person who lies in bed close to death, I start seeing plagues of locust and months of drought. I know it can't be good.


A day later I am working outside on my house, the bulb in the porch light has blown and I am trying to change it but the bolts that secure the light to the roof have rusted and it won't budge.

I'm up on the ladder trying to pry these bolts free with a pair of pliers. It's a nice day not too hot and not too cold. Eventually the rusty bolts start to move, little bit by little bit.

The first one comes off okay but the second and final one won't budge. It's getting frustrating and I am ready to take a hammer to the bastard when it eventually gives way... and the light fixture, which obviously hasn't been opened in 10 years jerks free in my hand.

I should have seen it coming but I guess in my miniature moment of triumph I must have opened my mouth just as 10 years of dead moths rained down on me.

I practically flew off the ladder, kind of like a human moth, erratically flapping my arms and spitting frantically. A lot of them had gone down inside my shirt so I tore it off like it was on fire and ran upstairs where I jumped in the shower and washed them off.

I'm standing in the bathroom thinking: "what the fuck? Is someone trying to send me a message?'. Two days and two very strange omens.

A foot full of dead cat and a mouthful of dead moths. I'm sure some biblical shit is going down here then it occurs to me what the message is.

#1. Blind folks should not cross the road anywhere other than at a pedestrian crossing.
#2. Never work overhead with your mouth open.

Life doesn't have to be this hard!

Travel woes

This week I booked our flights to the flaccid cock of America... sorry, I mean Florida. $89 each way and that includes complimentary peanuts and hopefully a plane with a pair of wings and some aviation fuel. A pilot who is older than 16 and younger than 80 would be nice too.

This will be our first flight with the baby and I would be lying if I said I wasn't dreading it. I hate flying to begin with, and now we will be doing it with a wee girl who doesn't like being strapped down for any length of time. I'm sure she will be wanting to run around the plane pulling on things like the emergency door release handle just to see what it does.

"Whee whee". Whoosh.........

Oh well, I guess it will still be better than the other options which were 2 days driving in the car or the "auto train" where you drive the car onto a train. This second option initially appealed to me until I discovered it was significantly more expensive than flying and renting a car, and that it also took 25 hours to get to Tampa. YOU CAN FLY TO THE PHILLIPINES IN 25 HOURS.

Usually I actually love travelling by train and I haven't done a long train journey in a while, but now that I think about some of those journeys and where I could have gone in the same amount of time.

The train from Reading in England to Glasgow in Scotland used to take 9 hours or so. I could have gone to fucking Venezuela in 9 hours!!!

Before I had enough money for the train I used to take a bus from Southampton back to Glasgow, this bus took a good 15 hours or so. I probably could have flown to Vladivostok in that time!!

I can't really complain though since those old journeys were a lot of fun and usually involved a good amount of drinking and smoking in the days before you were banned from doing anything remotely pleasurable in public places. PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SCRATCHING YOUR ARSE, YOU MAY DISTRACT THE DRIVER! PLEASE DO NOT FLUSH THE TOILET WHILE THE BUS IS AT A STANDSTILL AS YOU MAY DEPOSIT A JOBBY IN AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE AREA.

So anyway, it's back to Florida we go. The home of Mickey Mouse, gun-toting rednecks, looney Christians, voter fraud and old ladies with purple hair. Oh, I can't wait.....

Tubbydreaming

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be overly analytical.

This week, after I had watched my 6000th episode of the Teletubbies I started to notice that these cute aliens, or whatever the hell they are supposed to be, have continuity issues.

I noticed it first in an episode where Lala finds a guitar lying around and attempts to play it while Tinky Winky does his MC Hammer dancing impersonation (at least the Hammer trousers would look normal on a Teletubbie). Anyway, in the scene where Lala finds the guitar the sky over the Milton Keynes landscape... sorry... I mean Teletubbieland, is an overcast and dull grey. By the time the dead baby in the sun is laughing the sky is completely blue.

Now come on Children's BBC. Did you think we wouldn't notice?

The other slightly disturbing thing I have noticed is that after you get beyond about...oh... 3000 episodes in a day, the language of these multi-colored freakazoids starts to get darker. Every time a Tubby says "bye bye!" in that weird squeaky helium voice I start hearing "DIE DIE". I now have dreams where Po is standing over me holding a 12-gauge shotgun between my eyes and saying "It's time to Tubby DIE DIE!". Maybe I should stop eating so much cheese before going to sleep at night.

Oh well, I guess it's my own fault really. Somewhere along the line I lost touch with my inner-child (to quote Bill Hicks: "I saw my inner-child on the side of a milk carton") and now I view everything with suspicion.

I grew up too quick but it seems some people never grow up. Take this guy!

I had to laugh at that story. Everyone has either used or considered using the "My Granny died" excuse to get a day off work. It just doesn't seem like such an advisable idea if you are a public figure like a footballer.

I guess it is one of the trappings of celebrity that you can no longer kill off your relatives or take your kid to the dentist/doctors whenever you have a hangover. As soon as you make that first million that's it, avoid hangovers by never sobering up and you'll never have to off your granny.

Ayeeeeeeeeee.....