One Angry Monkey

For those of you who may have noticed a certain amount of quietness (I’m looking at you, Young Boobs), you need a hobby. No, I’m kidding. Mostly.

But I have been quiet, and here’s why. I’m moving on, with a shiny new look and a shiny new address to go with it. From now until whenever I decide to let the domain name expire, angry monkeys dot net will be an archive, shelves lined with my gabble but slowly gathering dust.

Feel free to pop by and have a look at the new home. Promise I won’t bite.

If you’re not a plumber but think you might like to be one, this cautionary tale is for you. Plumbing isn’t all glamour, “tradies’ crack” and fixing taps for lonely housewives. Sometimes the job can get unpleasant. Like today, for example.

As it turned out, even the “mad plunging skillz” of the Man of the House were insufficient for the blockage in our pipes. To my surprise (but not the Matriarch whose area of expertise is “poos and wees and water”) the problem wasn’t caused by my chronic intestinal distress. No, it was caused by the trees around us. Damn you, Nature, you rooted my piping.

That’s a specialty which requires special tools, not just a giant suction cup and a bit of elbow grease. Fortunately our property is managed by the Best Agent Ever. BAE, bless her massively tall and kind of scary heart, sent out a pair of specialists just as quick as she could. Why bless her heart? They were the prettiest pair of specialists I ever did see.

*ahem*

They took their cutter around the back and got to work. This is where the chronic intestinal distress really came into its own. I can’t imagine anyone’s waste water smells appetising but the odour filtering in through the back door (open because they needed a power point) was… Let’s call it educational.

Remember that next time you’re thinking you’ve got a shitty job.

The Man of the House has gone all alpha-male on me. I’m not quite sure what to do with him. I’ve never really been that great a fan of being bossed about by the male of the species. Conveniently, he’s never had bossy tendencies. But something has changed all of that.

What cataclysm could have brought about such a polar shift in MotH’s behaviour? I’m so glad you asked. You see, this evening every drain in our house simultaneously clogged.

When someone in the house suffers from chronic intestinal distress that sort of thing is almost inevitable. I’m kind of shocked it’s taken this long, but this is pretty much the longest we’ve been in one place. Now I find myself envisioning us leaving a trail of rental properties with time-bomb toilets across Adelaide as we move about from place to place, using up the plumbing and leaving like the back end of a swarm of locusts. That’s on me. I admit that.

So when the drains clogged, discovered when MotH tried to flush the toilet (it always starts in the toilet, doesn’t it?) I sent him out to buy our very first plunger. Thus began his downward spiral. He found me a plunger worthy of Mordor and returned to unclog my drains. We believed the problem existed solely in the bathroom. So he unclogged the drains through there and all seemed well in the world. I opened a new bottle of wine to celebrate.

A few mouthfuls of that and I realised I had made a grave error in judgment. The wine tasted vile. So I did what any good connoisseur would do and poured it down the drain in the kitchen. At least, I tried to. It just kind of sat there, taunting me. You won’t get rid of me that easily, it said. I’m here for the long haul, baby. I summoned MotH through to see if he could hear the taunts as well. Apparently he could, because he went straight for the plunger.

I wanted to do it myself. I’m not helpless, nor am I frail. I have some experience of my own with plungers courtesy of the stupormarket. MotH wasn’t content with that resume and thus wrestled the plunger from my grasp and proceeded to unclog the kitchen drain “properly”. Once he was done doing that, he went back to the bathroom and attacked the toilet with renewed vigour.
The poor thing may never recover.

I’ve created a monster.

There’s one key issue which dungeon-masters everywhere seem unable to agree on — the use of profanity in fantasy novels. For some reason people like to think of medieval society as this pristine environment where the innocent inhabitants are unsullied by the concept of swearing, let alone the reality of it.

Uh. WTF?

This has to be influenced, at least in part, by Lord of the Rings. Tolkein created this world where people just didn’t seem to swear. Hell, some of them randomly burst out into cheerful, life-affirming song whether you wanted them to or not. And to some extent that was a valid approach. I mean, come on. Gandalf stands defiant before the balrog. He raises his staff above his head then then slams it down, screaming, “Get fucked!” It would detract a little from the mood.

There were places where it may have been more fitting. If I, like Frodo, had some little freak bite my finger off, I’d be swearing at it even as it fell to its death in a pit of lava. Later on, as I lay dying on the side of Mount Doom, I’d probably turn to my faithful companion and say, “Jeez, we’re kind of fucked now aren’t we?” Yeah, I’d make a bad hobbit.

I am human though, so I might be a bit more qualified to comment on the siege of Minas Tirith. Huge orc army coming. Elephants (oliphaunts, whatever) with big spiky things attached to their already spiky tusks stomping along, decimating all the little horse riders who keep coming for whatever reason. “Fuck that,” I’d say, and find myself a softer target. I’m in the city. Chunks of stone the size of the elephants’ heads are raining down on me. “Oh, shit.” Apparently I’m not a good human either. What can you do?

People seem to have developed this unrealistic idea of what people spoke like in the past. The reality is, our current profanities are some of the oldest words in our language. Society has developed this pathological fear of swearing and the political-correctness revolution has only made matters worse. There are so many words we just can’t use these days. It’s now the f-word (or f-bomb if you’re American and have a yearning to make yourself sound like a complete and utter dipshit to the rest of the world), the other f-word, the n-word, the s-word, the b-word and the c-word. There are more than that of course but I’m getting tired of typing *-word.

Funnier still are the people who just kind of jumble up the letters. I saw a sentence including the word cnut. At first I assumed it was a typo. Apparently not. Apparently swapping 2 letters makes a word acceptable to the puritanical censors out there. Fair enough. But I’m calling people who p-word me off sea-nuts from now on.

The whole idea is ridiculous. Singling out fantasy as the one genre where swearing should never happen? Why not censor everyone, I say. Someone should go and tell Stephen King not to use swear words in his books. Sell tickets — I think that’d be a conversation worth watching.

Making a blanket rule that swearing shouldn’t be used at all in a particular genre is just not realistic. I’ll take my swearing out if artists who focus on fantasy images stop drawing female elf-warriors in revealing armour with their tits half popping out, how’s that?

What a fucking lot of bullshit.

The ability to see causes serious side-effects in certain people. The government should pass a law; all glasses should be labeled. “Warning: May cause compulsive throwing-out of stuff.”

Why is that bad? I like all my stuff, damn it. I don’t want to throw it out. I emptied out half of my kitchen yesterday. Sure, it’s tidier. It’s a small space so sure, maybe it frees up room for me to, you know, cook and stuff. I don’t care about having room to cook. I care about having my stuff. Were it not for my natural and entirely understandable reticence to fossick through my rubbish bin, I’d take it all back in a second. In fact I might even go so far as to beg my poor, discarded stuff for its forgiveness.

Today it’s the bedroom. That’s a way bigger task than the kitchen. Why? Because I hoard clothing, and so does the Man of the House. The greatest crime (other than the sheer ugliness of some of it) revolves around my pants. Most of them were a gift from a friend who had outgrown them after a couple of pregnancies. Most of these pants lacked the catches which hold them closed. A year and a half later I still never wear them, but I still have them. I think I have a problem.

So anyway, I’m tossing out the wrecked stuff and I’m going to donate the rest of it because sure, maybe I think they’re ugly as sin but obviously somebody liked them enough to buy them, right? It’s a huge task. I’ve already filled one box and three-quarters of a rubbish bag. My closet and drawers are looking a bit pathetic.

Time to go shopping!

Two posts in one day! Lucky Internet! Don’t get too used to it, I figure this means I can go a couple of weeks without updating now.

When I walked in the front door after picking up my new glasses I realised something. My house is a bomb site! So I barricaded myself in my computer room, where it’s much neater, so I wouldn’t have to look at it. Eventually my neuroses got the better of me though so I emerged and started straightening things up.

I picked up a pile of papers from the floor in front of the sofa and very nearly shrieked at the brown thing on the rug underneath them. Fortunately for me (and it) I retained some sense of decorum and the only sound was a muffled “mmmph”, which is the noise I make when really I want to shriek but for whatever reason my pride gets the better of me. I thought it was that spider the Man of the House vanquished a couple of weeks back returned to extract its freakishly oversized vengeance on me and my house.

A closer look and I wasn’t wanting to scream any more. I was saying “awwwwwwwwwww”. With exactly that number of “w”s I might add. It was a tiny gecko, no larger than my little finger which, I might also add, would be terrifyingly large if it had been a spider. He was in a dangerous spot there, my little lizard friend. If I let him stay there it would only be a matter of time before either I or the Man of the House stomped on him on our way to the sofa. But he was so little. I didn’t want to pick him up because I was afraid I’d hurt him.

Internet, you proved to be no help. One suggestion was to feed him iron filings and use a magnet. That might work, I’ll grant you, but how was I supposed to let him go again, hmm? Another was a tale of grass lassos. Also probably effective but there’s not all that much grass in my front yard and I didn’t feel like traipsing around the neighbourhood looking for some. That left only the good, old-fashioned upturned glass.

When I saw him up close against the stark background of white from the paper I used to cover the glass I wanted to keep him. Have you ever seen a tiny gecko up close, Internet? I have now. They’re just so precious. Unfortunately the aquarium has fish in it. Short of flushing them and earning the wrath of the Man of the House I had nowhere to keep my little friend. I took him outside and put him in the leaf litter under the tree in our front yard.

My little dragon now guards my front door.

I was minding my own business, messing about on my computer, trying not to squint too hard at the screen lest it become frightened and attempt to flee, when the phone rang. I shrugged and went to answer it, something I don’t usually do during the day thanks to telemarketers. I was so glad I did.

“Hello! This is your optometrist calling! We have your vision!”

I was so excited I thanked the lady a little bit too profusely. We hung up after an awkward set of goodbyes and I flew off on wingèd feet to make myself at least a little bit presentable. I emailed the Man of the House to see if he’d like to meet up for lunch but was fobbed off with a flimsy “I’m very busy at work.” Pshaw! I learned the truth when I arrived in town only to discover it was hosing down. Bastard.

I picked up the glasses and mentally dismissed the receptionist’s warning that the new ones might be a little much to handle at first. It wasn’t long before I learned how right she was.

My right eye was much worse than my left eye. That’s fixed now. Have you ever been conscious of the sensation of sight? It’s a little uncomfortable, to tell the truth. Then I put my sunnies on. You know, just to test them out. I was delighted to realise that the brown tint renders everything in sepia tones like an old movie.

It’s like living in an arthouse theatre.

Oh, and one quick clarification for YoungBoobs. My old frames for my regular glasses are about 5 years old. I got them when we first moved over because the arm of the ones before them broke. The sunnies, however, had frames closer to 8 or 9 years old. Mikey was still in a pushchair when I got them, I remember that much.

Smartarse.

I finally went and had an eye exam today. Boy, optometry has changed in the last ten or so years. Before I went in the receptionist did some preliminary tests, one of which was (unless I’m mistaken) a glaucoma test. That’s where they test your eyeball pressure. The last time I had one of those I was still in high school. Back then what they did was spray some anesthetic into my eye and press this thing against it. I hated it at the time.

What happened today made me long for the good old days of numbing spray and big blue light-things. What they do now, at least where I went, is get you to look at a flashing green light and then they blast a jet of air into your eye. Into. Your. Eye. And if you flinch they have to keep doing it because if you flinch they can’t get a reading. What I want to know is this; who could have a blast of air to the eye and not flinch?

As it turns out I’m even more skittish than most people when it comes to having jets of air blasting at my eyeball. After five failed attempts on each eye (before you reach for the calculator, that’s 10 in total) she finally gave up. I wiped the tears from my face and stumbled after the optometrist. Everything went well. I discovered I can’t see squat through my right eye even with my glasses on, and my left isn’t much better. Guess those headaches aren’t so mysterious after all. Then came the really really fun part — a check of general eye health. That’s where they shine a really bright light in your eye, then put up a magnifying glass to make it even brighter. It took quite some time before I managed to blink away the after-effects of that. Ever looked directly at the sun for more than a couple of seconds? It was like that.

Long story short, take care of your eyes or your optometrist will blind you himself.

In response to a request from Young Boobs that I write a blog post, here I am. There’s actually a very good reason why I don’t update very often. I don’t have a very interesting life. If I only update when something interesting happens then I look more interesting than I am. See how that works? I don’t mind though. I’m flattered that she wants me to update more often.

You see most of my life revolves around writing in some way. Whether it’s researching something I need to know about, writing new stuff for my current work-in-progress (henceforth called WIP because I’m lazy) or editing the last one, generally what I do involves sitting on my arse, not leaving the house. Except for the odd trip to the library.

So. Update. Um. I’ve just started my first pass of the manuscript I finished a few weeks ago. I’d been fiddling with it off and on, mostly tinkering with the prologue. I couldn’t get it right. I’ve got rather a lot of versions of that damned prologue. I’m considering a ritual burning. So the other day a daring ploy occurred to me. Instead of fluffing around with it endlessly, perhaps I should just ditch it. I didn’t like that idea because I hate throwing anything out, but today I finally got up the courage and did it. I’ve been re-working chapter 1 and it’s polishing up fairly well. It’s far from perfect but it’s better than it was and that’s all you can really ask from an edit.

Other than that, the only highlight of the day was the phone call I got from my favourite book store telling me the book I’d ordered had arrived. That’s actually more exciting for the Man of the House since it’s a book I ordered on his behalf. He doesn’t read all that much, you see, and I think that if I’m going to be a writer I need a partner who reads, even if it’s just the one book, over and over again.

Anyway, it just suddenly got really cold in my “office”. I’d turn the heater on but it smells like burning hair. That’s it from me.

Now the road is clear of rubbish and the Wombles are gone it’s apparently safe for the door-to-door salesmen to come out. Hooray. I think I preferred being mauled by packs of Wombles. These aren’t just any door-to-door salesmen. No insurance, no vacuum cleaners, no alarm systems, phone or electricity providers. I’m talking door-to-door religious salesmen. People who knock on your door and try to sell you something as intangible as faith.

I’m getting crankier in my old age and I’m starting to find the practice offensive and invasive. I don’t go door-to-door trying to sell people on the idea of agnosticism. I don’t hand out brochures on atheism. I don’t stop people in the street to try and talk to them about thinking for themselves instead of blindly following, especially when what they’re doing defies all logic.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Christians in general, or indeed the followers of any religion. I think that if that’s their choice then that’s their choice. So don’t go getting all up-in-arms. I have a live-and-let-live approach to religion.

That is exactly why these salesmen irritate me so much. I don’t bother you with my ideas of self-governing morality, being a good person for the sake of being a good person rather than to avoid going to Hell. So what gives these people the right to knock on my door when I’m in the middle of something and try to tell me my soul is being tainted by my godless ways?

Today it was the Mormons. I don’t know if they’ll come back. They may want to try and save the Man of the House. I hope they do. I’m going to set up a series of complex traps and pitfalls for them to negotiate. The final trap will be hooked up to the doorbell button (which isn’t connected to any bell so no great loss). When they press the button a giant, perfectly round boulder will fall from the roof and chase them down the road. Or squish them. Not my problem. Not theirs either. Lucky them, they get to go to Heaven early!

Anyway, as I said I was in the middle of something. I’d just pushed through a part I’d been particularly struggling with and was about to be On a Roll, when there was a banging on the front door. I rose with a growl and went to answer the door. There she was, armed with her bible and her brochures. Hi! I’m (who cares). I’m here to talk about the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Ugh. I know what that is. Hell we used to live just down the road from a giant frigging gold building where you people gathered. It was like a mormon migration path there. I thought we were far enough out. Who knew they sent missionaries to the eastern suburbs?

She was in the middle of her spiel, that fanatical light in her eyes religious people always seem to get shining fit to light up half of Adelaide. I really wanted to get back to what I was doing before the moment was lost. I interrupted. The fanatical light sputtered out and she looked at me resentfully. How dare I interrupt her while she’s “working”? I said that, honestly, I thought she was wasting her time. How can I be sure?

I blinked. You knocked on my door, lady.

If someone wandered into the woods and came back proclaiming he’d discovered gold tablets with a whole new gospel on them I’d be doubtful. If he said he was the only one who was allowed to see them I’d be skeptical. If he said they told him he was allowed more than one wife but it didn’t go the other way — only one husband for the ladies — I’d be laughing.

I drove off a mormon! Me! I could see her edging away, eager to be gone before God decided to visit his wrath upon my household. She left and I shut the door (and locked it just in case there were still Wombles out there) with a warm glow of satisfaction in my chest. I drove off a mormon! They’re usually impossible to get rid of. And I have yet to be struck by lightning, plagued by a swarm of locusts or rained on by frogs.

28 years old and still not smitten.