just add water

I am going to teach you how to create a hobo using the following:

- Yourself
- Old clothes (slacks + white, long-sleeved shirt)
- Red wine
- Cotton gloves
- Old shoes

Step 1: Mow the lawn or do some gardening with the new cotton gloves on. Make sure you take extra care to ensure they touch everything, excluding dog crap. That's just gross. If you have thorny plants, caress them so that the gloves tear (make sure nobody is watching...). When you are done, you should go from looking like Michael Jackson to looking like Michael Jackson if he wore the gloves and did the gardening. Cut the fingers off. It's a good idea to take the gloves off first, by the way.

Step 2: While you are still grubby and sweating, find some old clothes. Slacks and long-sleeved shirts tend to work best. Put them on and roll around in the dirt. Do it in other peoples' lawns for fun. If they chase you, it only adds to the authenticity (it also makes a good story nobody would believe).

Step 3: Apply red wine to the front of your shirt. Drink some red wine. Rinse and repeat.

Step 4: Slice and dice the slacks at the knees. Rips look cool and give you breathing holes.

Step 5: Have a shower. While it's fun to pretend you're a hobo, it's not fun to make it hygienically authentic. Seriously. Once you are clean, put the messed-up clothes on.

Step 6: Hopefully you haven't shaved for a week or two, unless you're female. Don't stop shaving if you are female. There is no area visible enough to worry about (unless you often sport facial air, which is disturbing) so just pretend you don't have access to a shaver (or wax) as opposed to being too real.

Step 7: Go to a party where everyone is dressed up as Cleopatra. Expect jokes at your expense, especially when random smells are noticed. You're a hobo now; you just like the attention. Go around giving pearls of wisdom to anyone who will listen.

Note: For added effect, wear a sign that reads: Hug a Hobo. If anything, it distracts people long enough to steal their wallets.

There you have it! An authentic hobo to take to any party that involves vague costume themes. Bring a spare change of clothes and you can continue the show by saying you are now dressed as a reformed hobo (I recommend this before going into the city). Good times, my friend.

At least that's what I had with a similar experience not long ago. Sadly, I must shave for a job interview tomorrow so this impressive mass of hair on my face must be sacrificed to the sink. Another reason being a writer appeals to me: You don't have to clean yourself up for work.

Just crawl out of bed saying "Welp, I'm off to work now!" and disappear for a few hours (or thousand words). Hopefully you don't forget to get dressed or clean before you head out though. I know I won't, because I have a mental checklist: Pants, check. Money, check. Shaved face, screw it; only going to a wedding.

On another note, my gardening saga continues, despite the slight delay putting a stupid wheelbarrow together. Reading the "instructions" hindered the simple task more than it helped.

"Step 11: Oh, btw, did you remember to put the legs on? Should have done that at about Step 2, I think. Don't worry, just undo a bit of frustrating work and pick some nuts and bolts to finish it off once you have the legs on."

You know what? Screw you.

I want to know who wrote that. No, I want to know who edited it - "polished it" - for public use. I hate to imagine the thousands and thousands of similar instruction sheets floating around the place. If I ever see someone putting a wheelbarrow together looking confused and frustrated with a sheet of paper in his/her hand, I will walk up to them, place my hand on their shoulder and say "Let go, my friend. Let go and you will be free; it all becomes clear."

I will motion to the sheet of paper and they will understand my meaning. And then I will slip my jacket (you always need a jacket in these scenarios) over my shoulder and walk off into the sunset. Behind me, the man/woman will have his/her family in their arms, watching me go.

And the world becomes better, one frustrated handyman and handywoman at a time.

That is all.

- G .ζ.

tell me, what is it that drives you?
is it the desire to succeed?
because, really, sometimes...
sometimes I want to fire my chauffeur
and just drive myself

flog before blogging

Sitting here, staring at James Boag's premium beer (from the Esk river they say) I decided to do another five-minute blog. I never explained this, so I am taking five minutes to inform you good reader(s) what a flog is.

I could go into elaborate detail to waste a few minutes and come to the stunning conclusion. I could bore you with back story (that would be made up anyway) and pretend it's important information. But instead, I want you to think about what it is. Lets see:

I mentioned in the first flog and this one what it is; if you haven't figured out by now, you fail.

A flog is exactly what I have just done. A weblog (blog) in five minutes. No more, no less. It's a five-minute weblog, genius.

write you are!

What an unusual week it has been! When I say week I am estimating the actual days passed, so I should say "What an unusual time period it has been!" But then you wouldn't have an idea of how long. Get what I'm saying? Good, let me continue then.

First and foremost, I spent most of last week's four-day end out and about. I mention this not because it's special or I have any illusions about being a social butterfly, but because I want to swap weekends. You see, right now my internet is "shaped" or "capped" or "snail mode." whatever you want to call it, it's slllooow.
What this means is web pages don't load so fast and downloading is out of the question. I have been reduced to dial-up speeds. It feels like I'm using a school computer to browse at the best of times. When my brother is trying to browse at the same time? Fuhgheddaboutit!

What's that got to with swapping weekends? Everything! Being unemployed, I have too much spare time and most of that goes into internet related activities. Now though, these activities (I know, you're thinking it's porn) have become tedious. I am not surfing the web anymore, I am struggling against the current in a jumper, track pants and shoes. If the weekends were swapped, I'd be too busy going out and getting drunk to care or notice and I wouldn't have all this spare time to do nothing.

But since I don't have the power to swap time around, nor do I know anybody who does, I had to settle for doing something else. I cleaned my computer desk and organised my CDs. I cleaned my room and created a monster of a rubbish bag - the bag I used was friggin' huge and I filled it to bursting point, somehow managing to shove it in the garbage bin. Today I will do some gardening.

Tonight, not long ago, I did some writing. That's why I'm here, in all honesty. As per Max Barry's suggestion, I stopped myself writing when I hit a maximum word count. Well, rebel that I am, I went over it. Doubled it, actually. That means I want to continue writing and needed an outlet.

You may be curious about what I wrote about. It's an interesting short story that is going to be sent away and hopefully published as part of an anthology of similar stories. I like to think I'm on a good track with it. Hell, I still have ideas screaming in my brain that I am hoping will undergo mitosis and give me what I need to continue and then finish.

Funny truth: While I have had an idea about what to write for this story, it wasn't until I stared at the tiles on the toilet floor that I came up with the mega-wham of an idea which gave me what I needed to tear the blank white page to pieces (metaphorically; literally wouldn't be a good thing to do.) As Stephen King says: two unrelated ideas and you have a story. Well, in my case it was more like two unrelated activities. Then again in some tragic cases shitting and writing can be the same thing.

Here we go.

- Pary ζ.

there's no way I'll tell her,
not today, not tomorrow
the fantasy is so much better
and she knows it already