In my radio job I’m lucky enough to score the odd interview with various celebrities – from sportsmen to reality TV contestants, pop singers to celebrity chefs and even the occasional ex-WWE wrestler (hanging out with both Eugene and Rob Conway last year was a personal highlight) – most guests are happy to chat and share bits of their lives while promoting their current ventures/adventures.

And while the interviews are pretty stock standard stuff (tell us more about this, what do you think of that? etc), occasionally the questions and answers will sway into very amusing territory making the chat so much more memorable. This year has been no exception as we’ve been joined by a few guests who had some very interesting things to share (updated as 2012 progresses):

‘ There’s a clip up on Youtube of a girl and a guy basically stalking me. And I know that because the title of the clip is called “Stalking Timomatic”…’

- Performer Timomatic talking about strange fans he’s met so far.

 ’…well…word on the street is…PUT IT IN YOUR ASS MAN!’

-Actor Firass Dirani on the tricks he learnt on the set of The Straits to get wildlife out of Australia.

So after cheering on my inner bargain hunter, I grabbed the boxes, threw them in my giant toy car (the Rx7) and boosted all the way back home to truly explore my new purchase.

Behold, my 8 dollar race track glory!

I felt like it was Christmas day 88 all over again, only I didn’t start the morning with champagne and my brother didn’t try to steal all my presents.

The good news is: It’s not one, but TWO tracks! My eight buck bargain turned out to be someones collection of two magnificent but slightly different sized track pieces. The whole collection ended up being:

Could buy this with it..

I also know that trying to switch to a newer card with a better rate and conditions seems to involve jumping through more hoops than a circus performer overdosed on caffeine.

The plan was to move most of that debt to a card with an introductory rate of just 1.99% for a year and endeavour to pay as much off it as humanly possible in the year (I crunched some numbers and worked out I’d pay a lot more off in the long time at 1.99% for a year than I would at 0% for only 6 months) without adding a single cent to the debt hole. Well that was the plan…in December. For those playing at home, it’s mid-January currently.

First I had to get approval. So I applied, pulled out pay slips, signed my life away on the bottom line and faxed it through to the bank. A week later I received an email saying… that I’d applied and they were still deciding. That was handy to know in case I’d been hit with a car recently and completely forgotten what I’d applied for.

Two weeks later I was approved but had to send in a couple of things to prove that it was still me applying and yes, I was still keen on the new card thank you.

Eventually (long after December had ended) I received a letter in the mail explaining that my card was on the way! (Hooray!) But before anything could happen, I needed to actually prove that I was still me (and not someone pretending to be me from Communist China who might use all my funds to buy Ski-Do’s or something I guess). All I had to do was sign the enclosed form and provide a couple of pieces of I.D that definitely belonged to me…
…which would have been easy if they’d actually enclosed the forms in the letter in the first place.

So I waited for the form (why not? What’s more weeks in waiting?) that never actually arrived (I was hoping someone had realized but no…) so I actually called the bank and explained my situation.

‘Not a problem’ the lady on the phone explained ‘You can just download the forms off the internet and get your ID’s witnessed by your local Justice of the Peace.’ Wonderful. So once I prove that I am truly Almigo (and not a communist spy planning the downfall of the West) I know have to prove that the passport I own is really mine (I had a lot more hair back then) and that it’s truly me grinning back stupidly on my own license.

Not mine obviously...

The kicker is though that when I finally track down a JP willing to look at my ID to prove I’m really me AND once I send it to the bank, it’ll still take 5-7 days for the card to arrive.

And I still have to activate it once I receive it. Weee, that should be fun. Wish me luck…

Firstly they set it in the fine (and big) state of Texas.

They were going to call it Storage Wars: Dallas but then they realized that the city of Dallas just doesn’t seem to conjure up the ‘bigger’ image they were hoping for, so they chose Texas instead.

Then they made sure half the contestants were bigger than the state itself.

I kid you not – if big is beautiful then by the looks of things, Texas must be the best looking place in the world. Yehah!

Deep in the heart...

So it’s goodbye to shaved heads, Outlaw branded t-shirts and smug assholes who yell ‘Yuuuuppp’ whenever they can to be annoying and hello to 20 gallon hats, bull ropes and bbq sauce. Load up the car pa, put on your good bra ma, we is off to Texas – yippee ki yo or something…

So once again if you’re not sure who is who and who indeed you should be cheering on and who you should be throwing your 1952 drinks cabinet at, never fear because I’ve created a rough guide. Cue the music, here comes the contestants:

RICKY SMITH

Wake up Jeff!

Looking like a country and western singer having a bad decade and coupled with an IQ of a cabbge, Ricky’s been in this game for nigh on nearly 40 years and has most in common with Darrell Sheets from the original series. They’re both mostly part redneck, they’re both on the large side (Ricky an impressive two Darrell sizes) and they’re both ‘experts’ in everything. Just ask them. Of course just like Darrell, Ricky does not like anyone else coming through and sniping at his auctions, feeling their a ‘threat to his livelihood’ (which of course begs the question, if they’re that much of a threat, why get on such a popular TV show and promote what you do? Go do it on the sly when the tourists ‘aint lookin..’) Luckily there’s one thing that Ricky has that Darrell doesn’t: fashion sense Texas hospitality. Which if I understand it, means he won’t try to shoot you if he finds an storage locker full of guns and you bid him up highly before he got there. To help him make a motza, he’s brought his nephew Bubba along (of course, you couldn’t have Storage Wars Texas without at least one ‘Bubba’ in it) and the world’s hardest working belt and shirt buttons. From what we’ve seen so far – Bubba and Ricky like to bid on big furniture filled lockers (probably because they couldn’t fit into anything smaller together.) Oh and he keeps mentioning gravy a lot. He likes gravy by the looks of things.

BUBBA SMITH

You look purty

The other half of ‘The Rangers’ (Bubba is the nephew of Ricky), Bubba looks like he’d be right at home nailing a buck with a bazooka, doing a pushup with a mack truck on his back or elbow deep in the guts of an old pickup ‘tryin to git the ole girl runnin’ (Yeah look I know most of the fine folk of Texas probably don’t talk that way but it’s amusing to write it) which makes him ideal for this series. Bubba’s the computer man to Ricky’s er…hammer? Once upon a time he worked in a cubicle and decided that it was a much better life to throw wads of cash at random storage lockers instead on the hunch something more exciting that one of his uncles stories would in under a throw rug or something. Luckily it does mean that Bubba’s a little more cluey than Ricky when it comes to semi current technology. On the show he’s a lot less obnoxious than his original series counterpart Brandon. Bubba’s been tagging along with Ricky now since 1991 which puts a lot of weight (pun intended) to the theory that every time Team Rangers find something interesting or even note worthy, they celebrate with a whole live steer, smothered in bbq sauce. It’s amazing to see that a) neither of the Smith boys have punched Victor yet (we’re waiting for it) or b) Bubba, for a guy named Bubba, seems to have a lot of interesting information in his head. There’s a fair chance he’s got a lot more sensible name in real life…like Reginald or something.

VICTOR RJESNJANSKY

Oh Victor, you very unnatractive man...

With his slicked back hair, designer sunglasses and a name longer than the buffet at the Smith Family Sunday lunch, Victor is the cool suave sophisticated cat that everyone’s been looking for. Well…as cool, suave and sophisticated as you can be at some of these circuses cunningly disguised as auctions. Well…that’s what he’s aiming for. What we get instead is a former New Yorker with the personality of a crushed can who feels that everyone in Texas is an idiot (kind of like Dave Hester from the first series, only Dave feels that everyone who isn’t Dave Hester is an idiot) who’s taller and leaner than the other contestants (the leaner bit isn’t too much of a challenge here) but just as annoying. The problem for good ole Vic though is that he’s this season’s ‘smug git you love to hate’ with massive shoes to fill left by Dave Hester – unfortunately from what we’ve seen so far, he doesn’t nearly 50% of the chip currently making it’s home on Dave’s shoulders and so far pales in comparison. He’s got a love of the fast lane (not going to help you if you’re caught behind the Smith family) has an in the real estate business and we can only guess that he moved to Texas to buy ‘bigger’ properties. Oh and did we mention he’s a dick? No? Well he’s a bigger tool than the collection at Home Hardware. The so called ‘bike’ expert actually doesn’t have half a clue when it comes to the value of the cycle varieties and he’s got two traits that will make you want to walk into your TV, kick his teeth in and then walk out again a) when bidding he likes to yell $INSERT MONEY HERE Right Here! and wave his hands around which gets annoying very quickly and b) he’s decided to raise the price on all the lockers because he’s a major dick and bids on just about anything, hoping to ‘drop it on them’. We’re hoping someone drops the Smith boys on Victor instead.

LESA LEWIS

Don't mess with her...

According to her official bio, Lisa is ‘a tough as nails business owner’ who’s completely unafraid of the opposite sex, especially anyone bigger than she is (she’s in Texas, everyone’s bigger than she is..) Now it’s just an uneducated hunch (don’t quote me) but I’m sure with that attitude, her previous businesses might have included managing a strip club which if true, would make an awesome story line. She’s rough like sandpaper, smokes like a busted rotary, could probably throw a punch that’d rock Tyson in the chops and undoubted has quite a few interesting stories to tell when the cameras aren’t rolling. So…she’s the complete opposite to Brandi from the first series then. However if you liked Brandi then you probably won’t enjoy Leesa as when she’s not complaining or looking like she should be a in wrestling ring somewhere, she’s in bitter bidding battles with her annoying catch phrase ‘Bring it’ – which works for the Rock when he says it, not so much for poor Lees. When at Storage Auctions, Lesa brings two trucks: One to haul off her newly won goodies, the other is called ‘Jerry’.

JERRY SIMPSON

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

‘They make em big in Texas’ is the understatement of the year when you size Jerry the shopping partner of Lesa for the first time (they obviously made him with some very heavy duty heavy machinery). Originally mistaking him for Lesa’s bodyguard (who knows, maybe he secretly is..), Jerry is Lesa’s boulder rock (wow, the jokes just write themselves here) and good mate who has the fun activity of trying to keep her grounded and realistic when the bids start to fly. All I know is that when Jerry and Bubba appear in the same shot, it’s like Godzilla and Mechazilla looking to throw down – the size of these gents is impressive for sumo wrestlers. Apparently he has a history as checkered as some of the shirts he wears on the show but this is his chance to turn his life around…well as much as you can when you’re trying to keep a smoking buzzsaw from losing all control and accidentally killing someone in the process. Still, if Lesa somehow finds a classic car hidden away in a dusty locker somewhere, you know it won’t be much of a stretch for Jerry to carry it away for her. So far Jerry hasn’t threatened to knock Victor out. Which is truly a shame but the way good ole Vic’s going, it can’t be too far away…

MORRIS PRIGOFF

Thanks for asking!

Every reality TV show needs someone mature, a little kooky and quite possibly slightly insane to boot. Gold Rush Alaska had Jack, the 200 year old veteran that helped invent oxygen, the original Storage Wars had Barry who was madder than a bag of bashed snakes and more fun than Hugh Hefner’s grotto and now Storage Wars Texas has Moe. To Moe (who is old enough to have probably introduced the caveman to the loin cloth), everything is fabulous and he’s more flamboyant than…well…probably the rest of Texas I guess. He always comes in dressed to kill surprise, has shocking taste in footwear and while he hasn’t resorted to midgets on stilts, chicken cars or fast psychics to net him so gold (like Barry was famous for) we’re sure it won’t be too long. Unfortunately for Moe the slightly oddball dude who rolls up in some simply amazing classic cars, a taste for antiques and who steals the show each episode schtick has already been taken (thanks Barry) but at least Moe has a mo to go with his shocking shoes. Fabulous.

WALT CADE

Far from Disney

Walt’s the auctioneer and looks more suited to selling 7th hand Cadillacs than he does opening up storage lockers. But there is one major selling point that puts him leagues ahead of his Storage Wars counterpart Don Dotson: namely the fact that you can understand what he’s saying when the bidding starts. It’s so refreshing to find someone who doesn’t launch into complete and utter gibberish when hands are raised. Unfortunately that’s he’s only selling point we could find as Don’s a hell of a lot more bubblier than Walt could hope for and you’ll instantly forget what he said as soon as he’s out of shot.

THE STORAGE WARS SONG LYRICS

Amazingly this comes up in my search terms a lot. I’m not really sure why though when you realize it only has a couple of lines. Still, if you searched for it and you landed here, allow me to oblige:

Money owns this town
Money owns this town (yeah you know what I’m talking about)
Money owns this town…

Complicated aren’t they?

AND FINALLY…

Is this new series as good as the original? No, not really. As much as I can’t stand both Dave and Darrell currently, they are more amusing than the rest of these goons put together. And sorry Moe, but you’re not a patch on good ole Barry Wise. Until this gets better (hopefully..) I’m sticking to the original…

Missed the first season and want to know how much of a smug bastard Dave Hester really is? Check out our writeup here at Meet the original players: Storage Wars. Alternatively you can also find a handy guide to who’s who in Gold Rush Alaska here.

But in amongst the crisp apple juices, the overdone fried meat, the reminders that both Kim Jong Il and Gaddafi both snuffed it last year and the televised fireworks display, I noticed there was a lack of something this year which to someone like me who finds amusement in the strangest of places, left me a little disappointed.

Where had all the doomsayers gone?

You know the ones – the nutters who stand high on their soapboxes and declare to all within earshot that the end is well and truly near and if you don’t repent, hand over your estate AND wash your mouth out with holy water, you won’t be coming back as a butterfly next time around after the globe explodes bang on midnight.

Centuries ago they would be wearing a wolfs head, waving a stick and commanding quite a crowd as they rambled on about firey destruction.

Er...no, not really like this...

Of course as time progressed, so did the medium of sharing tales of doom and gloom. From the sandy streets of the Roman Empire with a wolf’s head mounted on yours, to much more accessible method for doomsayers to spread the word warnings: like A Current Affair..

The joke writes itself really...

(I remember a couple of years ago watching ACA when they had a guy on whose religious group had predicted the end of the world, based on a few factors like: the way the animals they’d seen were starting to eat their food differently. If fussy animal feeding was a catalyst to the end of life as we know it, then Savannah our fussy Border Collie is obviously the destroyer of universes in disguise..)

Nowadays all you need is either a corner of the web to set up shop and ramble away about how everything you hold dear is about to turn to dust (kind of what I do here really but I’m nowhere near that morbid) or just a camera to upload to Youtube..

It goes for an hour, I only gave it 30 seconds…

But this (end of last) year I might have been living under a rock because I didn’t see one prediction of the world heading for the bin anywhere. Someone drunkenly did mention something about the Mayan calender at a recent Xmas work function but that’s hardly the same as a rabid bunch of naysayers stocking up on canned food and moving up to the top of the nearest hill in preparation for massive floods.
(Mind you I haven’t watched ACA for many years which probably explains why I haven’t seen any and why I don’t have any untoward anger to lesbian chess playing taxi drivers who rip off the system when the taxpayers aren’t looking either.)

Not even playing Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side of the moon’ on the way to the in laws was enough to tip the scales. For shame.

So I walked into this year with nary a apocalyptic prediction and amazingly, not a hangover either. Not a bad start at all really – but today being Jan 3rd, there’s still 362 days left on the non Mayan callender. Doomsayers, you’ve been slacking off and I expect you to start making up for lost time. For the sake of my own strange amusement, get predicting already!

Gee, where did the time go?

I mean I barely have enough time to cobble together a barely thought out and not very well planned at all awards ceremony blog post reflecting on the year that was! No time for the red carpet, hordes of paparazzi, celebrity guest presenters, TV network deals, crosses to Richard Wilkins or asking security to eject Brendan Fevola, lets just get into it.

I proudly present to you: The 2011 MIGO awards!
(Of course the MIGO award doesn’t actually stand for anything, it’s like the Oscar’s, Emmy’s, Tony’s and Nobel’s awards – probably named after some good looking bloke long forgotten. And who wouldn’t want to add another trophy with part of my name etched into the base of it?)

And here comes the winners!

THE 2011 MIGO AWARD FOR ‘DO YOU REALLY THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA?’ GOES TO…

GOLD RUSH ALASKA: THE SECOND SEASON!

Quite serious about pissing money up a wall..

Before all the GRA fans come pouring in (all 6 of you judging by the amount of people who know the show I’m talking about), know that I love this show. I love the dramas, the hopes, the characters and the adventures. But the show is about a whole heap of guys who know nothing about gold mining, pissing 250K up a wall to go mining, just about killing each other in the process in the first season and finding only enough gold to replace the sugar in one cup of coffee at the end of it.

Rather than get off the dead horse they’ve been flogging every episode, they return again this year to go piss up even more money mining in a completely untested area that they were forced to move to because they didn’t actually do a lot of proper planning for this new season. Nope, they ditched the real estate agent, found some more money to burn (from where??), located a suicidal British film crew to tag along for the ride and proceeded to blow things up again in true Hoffman style.

A lunatic idea but we’re loving every second of it. Keep on shining you crazy diamonds and enjoy your award.

RUNNERS UP: The Carbon Tax, buying something off local Facebook classifieds

THE 2011 MIGO AWARD FOR ‘OH GOD, NOT YOU AGAIN’ GOES TO….

KIM KARDASHIAN!

This is me messing with Google Image search now...

Unanimous decision from all judges on this one (namely me) as Kim came, Kim went, Kim got married and Kim got divorced while Kim made a dirty big pile of money in the process. Meanwhile a whole heap of Australian’s were sent to the emergency award when she arrived here after scratching their heads too hard to work out why she’s actually famous. Never has so much been heard about one lady called Kim since Eminem started rapping about his old lady way back when. You know it’s a bad year when even Paris Hilton gets overshadowed.

RUNNERS UP: Snooki, Max Markson

THE 2011 MIGO AWARD FOR ‘IS THERE ANYONE YOU DON’T SEEM TO KNOW?’ GOES TO…

DAVID GUETTA

Quite, quite mad..

Once upon a time, if a song had a ‘featuring’ attached to the artists name, the bloke after the ‘feat’ part would nine times out of ten be Snoop Dogg. See: Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Akon, etc.
Well while the Snoopster still occasionally features from time to time, the bloke who knocked him off his featured pedestal looks like the kind of guy most of us would avoid at parties before they got drunk and cried the party down. Still, the music world seems to love him as he’s turned up in quite a few songs this year, produced heaps more and looked incredibly awkward in most film clips.

Of course there was the time when both kings of featuring turned up in the same song: Sweat. A combining of forces so epic, no one else could be featured at all.

Does he truly know everyone though? Well we haven’t seen a David Guetta featuring Justin Beiber or Mariah Carey song so far..(which is truly a great thing).

RUNNERS UP: Snoop Dogg (last years winner)

THE 2011 MIGO AWARD FOR MOST ANTICIPATED NEW CAR RELEASE GOES TO…

THE TOYOTA 86! (FT-86)

Yummo!

Finally, Toyota’s back to making sports cars that look like absolute hoots to drive (see: Toyota Supra, MR2). And this one looks an absolute pearler. Sure it’s not force fed (turbo charged for anyone who isn’t me) but I’m willing to put that aside for a minute to admire this rear wheel drive, light weight, boxer engined thing of beauty. Someone did tell me that it’s borrowed a few things from Subaru this time around but since I’m a huge fan of WRX’s and looking forward to the new Subaru BRZ coupe released sometime next year, I’m happy to see a combination of bits for this possible drifter.

RUNNERS UP: Subaru BRZ, Mazda Shinari

And finally..

THE 2011 MIGO AWARD FOR ‘BAD IDEA FOR BEER’ GOES TO…

ANY BEER ENERGY DRINK!

No no NO!

Sure, the concept has probably been around a lot longer than just 2011 but this year is the first I’ve learnt of the idea that’s left a bad taste in my mouth…and no, not from drinking it. It seems that nothing is safe from the inclusion of gurana, guano or anything else energy producing that seems to grow in the back woods of Bolivia. While some of thing are well suited (we know Vodka practically goes with anything), beer is one of those institutions that really does not need a kick in the energy stakes. At all.

The only good news is that most seasoned beer drinkers who enjoy beer for it’s flavor and complexity will probably take one look at these in the bottle shop and chortle uncontrollably. Well, that’s what I’m hoping anyway…

And that’s all the time we have for the first Migo awards folks, take care of yourself and see you in the new year!

Because it’s obviously short on space at the moment…

Did you get something like this recently? (Not necessarily from Bigpond):

BIGPOND Manage my Account
BIGPOND Orange Masthead Line
Dear BIGPOND Customer,

This is a reminder to activate your BIGPOND Internet Security Suite, powered by web mail hosting messaging center to all our account owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail center for this year 2011. We are deleting all unused account to create more space for new ones and to stop Spam mails.To prevent your account from closing,you have to update it below to prove the account is still in use.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW:
First Name:_________________
Last Name:____________________
Email Username:_______________
Password:____________

Warning!!!
In failure to verify your account within 72hrs on receiving this notification,
your account will automatically be deactivated.

Thank you for using BIGPOND webmail Account
Warning Code: QOTOSBCG8B52AXV
BIGPOND webmail Account Service Team Management.
Thanks for your co-operation.:

Privacy Policy | Terms of use ©2011 BIGPOND Intellectual Property. All rights reserved.BIGPOND and the BIGPOND logo are trademarks of BIGPOND Intellectual Property.

(Oh noes, not my interwebzz!)
If you did, feel free to get one on one with the delete button. It’s a trick email for the gullible and uneducated to sign over your details in a blind panic. You can read more about it here: I’m not falling for this Mr Internet!

Take your scam and scram scammy scum Sam!

And if you did email through your details mistakenly? Call your provider ASAP, explain the situation and get them to change things on their end. It’s an easy and painless operation (after you prove your identity of course)

Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to share your story with others either – it might just be just the trick to stop many other people handing over their deets.

And to the idiots who are sending these emails, I hope Santa gives you scrotum cancer.

Merry Christmas!

Behold, in all its glory…

THE OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG!

Purrfect!

Yes indeed, it is an overpriced mug with a cat on it wearing Amy Winehouse’s signature do. And yes I did blow $15 of my $20 maximum budget on this cup of glory. And there in lies the beauty of such a useless present: there is no reason why such a thing should exist.

I mean did Amy ever sing about cats? Did a cat ever sing like Amy? Were coffee/tea/hot bonnox drinkers missing a piece of their soul before this union of a housecat and a deceased singer came together in cup form?

Where is the logic in such a thing?

Which is why it’s a brilliant gift to wrap up and give to your Kris Kringle present receiver this year. For a number of reasons including:

a) It’ll be a complete surprise when unwrapped. You just can’t prepare yourself for the attack of awesome that is the OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG. It might look empty, but it’s chockers full of ‘different’ with more than a dash of ‘WTF?’

b) Both cat, Amy Winehouse and cup fans in general will enjoy this kitsch combination

c) Your Kris Kringle gift will be completely original and it’s highly unlikely that more than one OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG will appear at your Kris Kringle unwrapping ceremony (unless thousands of Kris Kringle buyers read this post then rush out and buy them all in a mad OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG buying frenzy.

d) Unless you’ve pre-warned everyone what you’re going to blow your 20 sheckels on (namely the OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG) no one will have any idea it came from you. How do you play Kris Kringle detective with such a useless gift? Unless you sport a massive ‘I LOVE AMY WINEHOUSE R.I.P’ gravestone tattoo on your cleavage, I’m pretty sure you’re safe.

Not me, therefore I'm safe.

Fair suck of the sav though – technically in a word, it’s overpriced crap. Yeah okay wise guy, that is two words but you get my high speed drifting. $15 for a stupid mug that not even cat cup collectors would probably shell out for and true Winehouse diehards would baulk at. In all honesty there’s probably much more amusing and relevant coffee cups at your local $2 store. And it sure as hell won’t make your nasty instant coffee taste any better.

But in a world of toy mooses that crap candy when you press their heads, a whiteboard that reads ‘who I am going to destroy today and everything else that I’ve unwrapped on the receiving end of a KK present, it’s perfect. It’s so bad, it’s deliciously good. Long live completely irrelevant cup tributes to singers long gone.

OVERPRICED AMY WINEHOUSE CAT MUG – available at your local overpriced newsagent today.

Merry Kris Kringle everybody!

It was a journey and a half to get here (most of that journey spent trying to work out how many spanners online booking service Webjet could throw into my plans – turns out quite a few..) but finally after a cramped ride in a Lancer, some dubious airport sushi and a co-passenger overly excited about every single button on the plane he could press, in a first for this site, I’m penning this piece from 30,000 feet…

Yeah I’m blogging from the air into a device which Richard Branson swears by – the original Ipad, the good ole Spirax notepad.*

Ipad 1.0

And while I’m killing time with no on board movie (I’m flying Tiger Airways which means there’s pretty much no on board anything…) I’m reminded why flying pretty much anywhere is a..well..

..truly unique experience.

• The last time I took a train anywhere, I kept my belt on. Not an option when first entering a terminal as there’s obviously massive amounts of room in and behind your belt buckle for concealing weapons of mass destruction. Hence why you have to hold up your pants yourself while walking through the metal detectors.
• Airport security confiscated my can of deodorant in my on board luggage because it didn’t have a cap on it. Secretly I believe they were all out themselves and my quality choice of anti-persperant was just too appealing. Regardless, I still have to buy more when I land or smell like a security guard who didn’t confiscate enough shower in a can.
• We had to change our 4 month old son’s nappy in the communal disabled toilet/ baby change area/ airport mould testing chamber. Which wasn’t too much of a drama aside from the fact that the tourist before us had proceeded to crap out the a demon turd that even Kenny the Plumber would have baulked at. The smell even put Jackson’s usual best nappy filling work to shame and it’s no wonder he’d snuck into the disabled toilet to unleash hell away from everyone else…well except us.
• And where else could you buy a half can of coke the size of a small child’s fist for the same price as a beluga sandwhich? Only while flying of course! A sandwich will set you back a small personal loan while ordering spirits means you’ve just signed up for another mortgage. The smile the hostess gives you when you hand over your credit card for a bag of chips? It’s a small thanks for helping her pay off her new shiny car.

Still, for the price you pay to get from A to B, it sure beats driving: What with all those stops you can make at scenic points on your journey, all those pesky tasty eateries you can spend relaxing time in, the leg room in the front seats, those annoying flat turbulence free highways and that loud in car system tuned to your musical tastes…thank god for cattle class air travel!

On second thoughts, throw me the keys to something fast and force induction fed, hand over your Best of the Doors cd, relinquish your petrol card and watch me go.

This would be ideal

It won’t be as near as fast as an airbus…but I won’t have to get into the car an hour before I can actually drive off, I already know where the exits are and I went I finally get to B (eventually), no one with a rehearsed smile will thank me for sitting there for hours. And that suits me just fine…

*Transcribed later to WordPress.

Prepare to get nailed!

Yep, in Casa De Almigo we fix things by hitting them with hammers. It sure ain’t pretty but it works…

THE OBLIGATORY BACK STORY

About a month ago when the afternoon was hot and the front patch of my lawn had overdosed on ‘Go feral’ cocktails, I decided it was high time to fire up my Talon lawnmower and proceed to mow down all and sundry in my way.

Well like most things I attempt to do, that was the original plan. And like most things I do, it never worked that way.

In a move that would have scored me the gold cutlery in the Oslo chainsaw starting championships, I wrenched the pull cord out in a brilliant display of mower starting strength. And deep in the bowels of my Talon Lawnmaster 2000, a bit of plastic suddenly had a back spasm and snapped like a bad singer eliminated on X-Factor.

Which meant the cord wound out…and stayed out. It would no longer retract.

Which meant that once I stopped it, it’d never start again.

Not an alternative

So it spent the next month up on blocks in the House of Pain (my shed) as I systematically took it apart and cursed mowers in general. And after 5 minutes of having no idea where to look I gave up. In the meantime my lawns celebrated by mutating completely out of control – fuelled by recent downpours, they suddenly overgrew massively. So much so that when our dog Savannah goes to play outside, we have to put out a MDR (missing dog report) to find her in the grass.

No Savannah, no!

IT WAS TIME TO CALL IN…THE BROTHER IN LAW!

Over dinner one night recently I dropped the question ‘So…how much do you know about mowers?’ and after admitting ‘not much’ he still agreed to take a look for me to see if he could get any further than I could.

Ten minutes later, he’d located the surrendering bit of plastic that was supposed to be joined at the hip to the case, but wasn’t. Without this tiny bit of plastic, the metal coiled spring wouldn’t recoil at all and starting the mower without kicking the crap out of it and sacrificing a goat to the dark gods just wouldn’t work.

Sadly the plastic bit was more damaged than Lindsay Lohan’s clean reputation by now and was given a swift exit. So we needed something tough, reliable and easy to use to put into place to hold the spring in a coiled state of readiness.

My future father in law would have just laughed, picked up a bit of scrap metal in his shed, fire up his tools and in five minutes would have created a flawless solution that’d end up being stronger than anything in the mower when it rolled off the showroom floor.

Well I’m not Barry, my tools are limited and I didn’t have time to take it to him, so we did the next best thing. We raided my own shed and decided the best thing to do to fix this stubborn mower…was the drive a nail into it. So a beer or two later, we did just that. My mower repair solution? A bullet head nail right into the casing. Cheap, plentiful…and surprisingly effective!

Brilliant solution!

With not much room to work with, we had to create the hole for the nail first (before we accidentally smashed the case into pieces. So use a drill yeah? Nah, wasn’t charged at all and it was as flat as the cars at the crushers. So instead I broke out the wall powered dremel and drilled into with that (not what they’re made for come to think of it but desperate times call for desperate measures) and soon we had the nail into the casing…and through the roof of the mower. Not pretty but what mower truly is?

It took a bit of fine tuning (the nail was a bit longer than expected – they’re the only ones I’ve got in the shed atm). But finally when you pulled the cord out…the retractor pulled the cord back in!

Hallelujah!

Nailed it!

As you can see we had to have a test strip to make sure that everything else was working (and it is) but we were too busy to actually you know, mow, so that’s today’s mission.

Work in progress!

I just wish it hadn’t rained so much recently and that my backyard didn’t happen to represent the Amazon jungle.

Sigh. Wish me luck!