12 weeks ago, at work, a good friend said to me, “Never start a sentence with a number”. My mind fashioned this as peculiar. And then she said, “You shouldn’t start sentences with and either”. Jesus Christ Kate why do I talk to you. Then she finally said, “Shanga, join a gym... join a gym or you will die”. Seemingly harsh but very necessary words for my adorable ears to hear and my munted mind to process. I finished consuming my Double Quarter Pounder with extra awful, digested said culinary atrocity with great shame and loneliness and continued to entertain my mildly annoying 8 pint hangover with hilarious notions of actually doing some work.
The next Monday, in a fit of delirious lunacy, I went to Fitness First next to work. Challenge #1: It’s on the second floor with no elevator or human trebuchet. INCONVENIENT. I want to get fit, not trek to fuckin’ Mordor. I reached reception at the seemingly stratospheric summit and took a seat for about 10 minutes. There wasn’t a queue. I just needed time to get my breath back. In fact the perky receptionist was looking at me the entire time, perfecting her ability to shrug unapprovingly using just her eyebrows. She has a gift, a worthless worthless gift.
All of a sudden, a scatter bomb exploded with shrapnel flying at me in the form of energetic white toothed personal trainers. The girls walked like men and the men walked like girls and all of them had the unexpected flamboyancy of a ladyboy Halloween party, (which reminds me, check my credit card statement from my Thai holiday then make appointment with Dr Russell accordingly).
I was finally cornered by the Alpha-fit-bastard-I-hate-you-male. I’m not sure exactly what transpired next but shortly thereafter I became alert and aware on the sidewalk with a 12 month membership and weekly personal training sessions to boot. None of this concerned me all that much. I was just thankful I hadn’t woken up in police lock up or in her bed. Any day that begins with neither of those things is going to be a fuckin’ pearler! The point being, I was now, officially, a gym rat for the first time in my life.
Welcome back! To you, to me, to the written word which then becomes the read word by you and the spoken word by my friend Ben because he’s too dim witted to read like everybody else. I like to takes this crapportunity to speak about a recent tragedy. My life without alcohol. Ok maybe not completely without alcohol. I mean, come on, I’m not Batman. That guy’s like on call like all the time. He touches a drop of clean skin wine and he puts the entire city of Gotham and the mercy of unmarked, unchecked thuggery buggery. As for me, let’s assume that I’m on my 6th beer, each beer with alternating chasers of straight Glen Fiddich and bottom shelf cab merlot, and I get a call from the commissioner to go defend city hall from international cross dressing mega bandits, chances are no-one’s going to bat an earlobe when I simply respond with, “wrong number pal”.
So here I am, stone cold sober on the hottest day of the year and nary a Carona raping lime wedge in sight. Like I said. Tragedy. I’m here to protest that there’s a reason alcohol has been enjoyed before history started becoming chronicled. It’s fucking… awesome. Perhaps a little too awesome for its smug self. Subtle and deserving in its smugness might I add. You see, it’s bottled awesome. And when you drink the contents of bottled awesome, well it doesn’t take a puke in a handbag to realise that awesomeness is now inside you.
However it’s awesomeness with an expiry. Not to mention the price you pay to get the awesome and the price you pay the next day in any number of other ways. Be it porcelain hugging “butterflies are too noisy” hangover. Or be it the cost of your pride for making poor overweight practice girl Jennifer walk the hall of shame at 7:46am in your shared house while you’re one successful flatmate Brendan is getting ready for his banking job all the while nodding disapprovingly at you while you lie in your 2 month old sheets, smelling your fingers and eating stale corn chips that you’re quite certain fell out of her hair during a courtship rife with rank and unspoken sweaty horror.
With that said… (sorry, I can still imagine Ben reading this out loud…”wif dat sed”). So ah, yeah, look, they can’t all be winners. Now here’s where I would go on about the heavenly joys of booze but that’s a song you’ve heard and a dance you’ve witness before. I shall never force you through it again. So I have naught but the choice to continue discrediting our friend and saviour, alcohol.
During this last week, where I only got drunk one night and mildly tipsy another (seriously, that’s considered a dry week folks), I’ve become reacquainted with a person long since forgotten. Me. And my God what a stark raving disappointment I turn out to be. Did you know, sober Shane, is completely incapable of contributing to a conversation. He can’t think, create, focus, drive or be interesting in any conceivable or inconceivable way. (all of you who have the Prince’s Bride on your mind right now, kudos to you… now lend me your ears). I’m watching more tv than I ever have before. I’m hungry more often. I don’t play guitar or write. I smile at least 80% less and I’ve forgotten what my laugh actually sounds like, (probably just as well as I’ve been told it sounds like the Olsen twins if they assimilated into one mutant person). I just sit and stare at tv programs I hate and not even notice the poor hapless hours of my life falling through the cracks into wasted oblivion… again.
The wisest of you will interpret these words of mine as just a bit of guff for shits and giggles. The worst of you will say I have a drinking problem. To that I say, read the previous paragraph again you naff. Clearly I have a SOBER problem.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Four Days.
Warning: The characters in this blog are trained alcoholics. Many brain cells were violently violated during the occurrence of these events. Without cause, without just, without a shred of common decency. Just wall to wall filth mongering.
I type to you now, through my conveniently attached, mildly nimble yet somewhat rebellious fingers, on the tail end of my 6th double shot Ballentines on the rocks. It’s been awhile between textual drinks but, by jesus jumped up fiddling murmuring drooling child mongering (2nd use of this word but what a word!) old Christ, it has most certainly NOT been awhile between real drinks.
Two out of my top three humans came to see me on the weekend week ago. And when I say they came to see me, I quite obviously mean they came for completely different reasons. One needed my motorcar and the other needed my house. But apart from that, it was all about the big fella. That’s me.
The first fiend, I collected from Melbourne airport towards midnight on Thursday night. I have changed his name to protect his guilt and he will be referred to henceforth as Benn. Benn and I have been best mates since 1988 and that makes everything so very tiresome. Tiresome for everybody. Except for me. And Ben… I mean Benn. Our brains have taken turns metaphorically spooning each other for the better part of twenty years. And it was just like old times as we put away a bottle of scotch, told wild stories and played video games until 5am Friday.
Just like it has happened so many times before, I woke to Bennn standing at the foot of my bed and murmuring anti-buzz words like relax, natural and wet. With the reflexes of Garfield on slimfast shakes, he managed to dodge whatever item I hurled at him from my bedside table. Like a Tarantino film, we somehow time warped to the part where we’ve buried the body and are in the car headed towards the other side of Melbourne to collect the van he just acquired. A 1978 Transit. Stop. Check yourself. Now wreck yourself as I tell you again. A 19fuckin78 Ford fuckin Transit. The heckling license that I’ve acquired after enduring over 20yrs of friendship with this man allowed me to say things like, what in the sphincter of hell are you thinking? and how you haven’t yet been picked off by a bird of prey yet, I’ll never know. My words were a shot of whiskey splashing against a mountain side though. Pointless, wasteful, inconsequential AND inconse-Quench-al, (see what I did there? Well aren’t you fuckin special).
So we paid off the old omni-toothed slagathor who up until this turning point in the earth’s history had kept this apparent abomination of a motor carriage a very well considered secret from the general populace and we convoyed, (LOVE the convoy), back to the deer in the headlights city of Melbourne. We checked into the luxury loft suite at the exclusive Sebel Hotel on Collins St. Yeah, exclusive to my ass! A quick reminisce to the bottle of scotch from the night before inexorably lead to the decision of acquiring another bottle… post haste! The acquisition of said bottle was swift and homicide free, so refreshing.
After some choice communication to the other drinkers in the area, using my mobilised electronic telecommunications apparatus (named MKO… yeah, my phone is named Mary-Kate Olsen), we soon had a suite full of people that mattered. They mattered because they were there. They mattered because they were with us. In any other circumstance, I wouldn’t even spit on them. But because they were with us, I considered, at numerous intervals in the free flowing conversaries, to spit right up all over each and every one of them. Without pause or concern. Because they mattered.
The bottle of scotch and several beers passed by like a tortoise on a Harley FatBoy passing a hare in a wooden box in the ground. And before we knew it, and seriously, it was before we actually knew it, well I can’t speak for Benn but I was already at the let’s talk about the universe or get in a fight with a wise-cracking midget phase… YOU know what I’m talking about, we arrived at a pub in St Kilda. And that’s a bit of a paradox in itself, because a midget cracking wisely is hardly wise at all wouldn’t you agree? Anyway, I continued to spiral in and out of awareness for the remainder of the evening.
Apart from the time I woke up driving in ‘98, I couldn’t have been more upset with my form Saturday morning. I woke, in the hotel suite, on a perfectly extracted sofa bed, in a bathrobe fit for an anorexic garden gnome and the taste of dried up upchuck on the inside of my cheeks. It was one of those hangovers where you tell yourself you’re never going to drink again. Again apparently having the time equivalent of about 20hrs in this instance.
I dropped Bennnn off at his freshly acquired Ford oh shit an explosion from that devil spawn of the seventies would surely kill us all Transit and immediately made vehicular haste for Melbourne airport once more. You see, it was now time to collect the other from my top three humans. I have changed her name to protect her guilt and she will be referred to henceforth as Zoee.
Unlike me, Zoeee did NOT have a hangover that bore the pain of a thousand ear rapes. In fact, quite the opposite, (don’t ask me what the opposite of an ear rape is). She was genuinely excitable to begin with, she was packed to the gills with coffee and she had just been on a plane. Any girl who’s just disembarked a mammoth winged dildo is almost always the complete opposite of lethargic. I gently and quietly hugged her hello. I was barely a nano-second beyond commencing the disengagement of my drive away from the airport hug when she lunged a free hand towards the car stereo and turned it up as loud as it would go. “Why the fuck do I keep her in the top 3?!” I fiercely pondered. She then cast me a look of a dog that just proudly ate its own vomit. “Ah yes, that’s why. Atta girl”.
The drive to from Melbourne to Ballarat was marred by a series of events surrounding the unanimous distaste for burger gherkins, the apparent fact that I, a man, have a purse stacked to the hilt with tampons and the horrible horrible prospect of the forthcoming Saturday night with an inevitable and unavoidable drinking session. You see, when she’s not kicking my ass in every conceivable fucking way, Zoeeee is a professional wrestler. And a wrestling show means an after-party by default. These people smash the shit out of each other for fun. Just imagine how they party.
Now for those of you who don’t know her, fret yourselves not as she’s not some boat-eating behemoth of a mangina-donning Neanderthal-ette with an oddly cumbersome testicle-hiding swagger in her step. She’s actually what you’d consider quite breathtaking. I say it’s what you’d consider because I consider her to be an unyielding cantankerous wench with every ounce of my pride in a vice as she slowly yet joyfully makes sports energy drinks out of my shame filled tears of despair.
Upon arrival in Ballarat, I dropped the intolerable yet highly addictive baby-giraffe-esque creature off at the wrestling venue so she could prepare with her colleagues by eating clubbed seal, drinking orphan tears and yelling “flied lice” at Asian kids even though those kids have trouble saying Ls, not Rs, you ignorant fucking round eyes! Meanwhile I went home and attempted to rest my weary bones. But to no avail. My mind would not sleep and before I knew it, It was 8pm and I was in the bleachers of the Wendouree Sports & Events Centre screaming, yelling and cheering for wrestlers I had never heard of but was willing to fight for in the carpark.
The show was a raging success and the Ballaratarians put on the best crowd Zoeeeee had ever wrestled before. Meanwhile, I still felt like crap in its purest form from the preceding night. It was now 11:30pm and it was time to attend the wrestling after-party. I drove us there without a doubt in my mind that we’d walk in, Zoeeeeeee would network a little and then we go back home and watch cartoons. We brought a two litre coke and a bottle of Ballentines scotch… because… you know, it’s rude to turn up to a house party without anything at all. Upon arrival, it was drawn into sharp relief that there wasn’t a single drinking receptacle in the entire kingdom of earth. Did we lose a war?! Well, not a problem. It took little more than a silent and agreeable nod between us to ascertain the only way forwards was to pour out half the coke onto the ground and empty the contents of the full scotch bottle into the remaining vacant half. I didn’t go near it. It was 12:15am and my head was throbbing. My bones were sore. I just wanted to sleep. By 12:18am I had taken three hearty swigs of the rocket fuel. I turned to Zoeeeeeee, with the look of a 4 year old who just got a tonka truck for wetting the bed, and proclaimed with unmatched glee, “I’M BACK BABY!”. I don’t remember much beyond that except for the fact I had a fan club and almost puked on the biggest billiard table I have ever fucking seen in my life. Either that or my eyes were so pickled by all the alcohol that they had actually shrunk and therefore the table just had the appearance of being epic.
Sunday morning was, to say the least, difficult. Sunday lunch was a little easier. Forcing down a pint in the mid afternoon was downright nigh impossible and took the better part of an hour for the one beer each. There was nothing for it. We were defeated. We conceded. It was time to just go home, have some water or tea and finally watch those cartoons.
But with great drinking power, comes great responsibility to drink irresponsibly. On the drive home, ZoeEeEe spotted, what seemed the biggest Dan Murphy’s liquor store on this side of the cosmos. I’m not sure how the car parked itself but we were inside bowing to the biggest bottle of bourbon I have ever fuckin seen. I’ve never gone from complete hilarious giddiness to pure unadulterated fear and back again in such a short span of time in my life. For a while I thought we were never going to make it out with our purchase. Then I thought we’ll never make it out at all... ever. Anyway, I’m fairly certain the only reason we didn’t walk out of there with the gallon of bourbon was because of the global economic crisis and the fact my car can’t transport anything heavier than my car itself. So we did the next best thing. Bought three bottles of wine and a litre of vodka.
And that’s how Stella got her groove back.
Ps, the van is actually really good and so was the wrestling!
Just who in the hell coined the phrase, “let the cat out of the bag?”. It’s odd. Seriously odd. Unnecessarily odd. How did the person who first said it manage to communicate its meaning to the rest of the unsuspecting populous? Would it be possible for me to introduce a new phrase? Perhaps, “oops, looks like I just buried the hamster in the truffle” or “wow, she just made the Viking do a star-jump”. Well, cats have now been out of bags since about 1760. It’s here to stay and we’re just all going to have to deal with it.
Now it seems I have a pussy of my own to let out of the sack… did I say that right?
A few weeks ago, I made it known in cyber-space that I had rekindled my relationship with Lucy Liu. We had been on again off again but recently, she’s beginning to grow on me. If you had Lucy Liu on your face, you’d agree she’s a bit of alright. She keeps me warm and I’ve learnt to deal with the itching. She tends to tickle others but I don’t get jealous. I respect her privacy.
Here’s the thing. I’m proud, honoured but more so utterly terrified that no-one laid question to this. It could be because anyone who follows the status of my being online already knows that claims like this are not uncommon and it’s simply expected, these days, to see that “Shane is allergic to gravity” or “Shane just sneezed and farted at the same time and is now inside out, typing this on a tiny laptop inside himself with a handy flashlight”. Yes it seems that “Shane has rekindled his relationship with Lucy Liu” was rightfully dismissed as typical foolery by most people. But it’s the handful of people who were happy for me and Lucy’s reunion that sparks endless amusement for me.
Allow me to “let the gerbil out of the Gere” by announcing that Lucy Liu is not a real woman and most certainly not the Lucy Liu of Charlie’s Angels notoriety. Lucy Liu is the nickname given to my beard.
Yes, my beard.
I remember the naming of the beard coming about sometime in 2007 or 2008. Don’t ask me why as I won’t be able to tell you. The answer lies, segregated, in the bottom of about 2 dozen Carlsberg bottles.
In closing, Lucy and I are very happy to be back together, just in time for the winter.
Proposed substitutes for "Let the cat out of the bag". Whoops, looks like you just...
As you may well know by now, I ride the train to work. It’s about 12 hours a week of boredom, pain, hilarity, politics, carriage hierarchy, subtle nose picking and incessant, claimless farting. One commute in particular found me seated next to my mate, Matt, (fart free thank goodness). After traditionally archaic tales of old and tails of old, conversation turned to what we thought would make the ultimate train.
The predicted folly of pool tables, roulette tables, bars and bowling lanes were strewn about our conversation like popped balloons on the colourfully littered floor of a combat clown massacre. It’s now apparent to me that those plain white bread ideas were the necessary blouse and bra we had to tear off to get to the potentially noble prize winning idea. Boobs.
You see, the train I take has a seating plan very similar to that of a bus or plane. Rows and rows of seats, where you’re staring at the back of the seat in front of you, carefully watching the dust mites make a break for it from the person’s scalp sitting in said seat.
But back to the boobs, (always back to the boobs). The idea was a little out of this world but I think it would teach us valuable skills to helps us, as individuals, work together. It was decided that every single seat of the train would have a set of luscious breasts hanging from the seat in front. Yes. That’s right. It’s proposed that the train is not powered by the engine, but actually by all the passengers leaning forward and motor-boating the swinging breasts in front of them in unison. The more vigorous the motor-boating, the faster the train goes. The details pertaining to sanitisation, excess slobber, the decrease in women wanting to ride the train and the dramatic increase of men with no destination in particular wanting to ride the train all day, have yet to be worked out.
But just picture it would you. You’re in your car, parked behind the boom gate at the railway crossing… and 4 carriages of people all motor-boating a set of fun bags idle past you in eerie awesomeness.
motor-boating explained:
(there was an idea for a train tailored towards women, but it got messy and was swiftly abandoned)
I have a pimple. It’s on my nose. It’s gigantic. And by tomorrow, it will join the Great Wall of China as one of the only man made structures able to be seen from outer space.
I name my pimples. The previous, a few months ago, was named Clarence. The thing about Clarence was his tenacity. Even in the face of evil, or on the face of evil as it were, Clarence stood tall, proud and promptly gave all who cared to notice a stifling and resolute finger. The universal gesture for, I care for you very little at this point. It was only the welcome decay of time that saw Clarence ultimately evicted from Casa Del Shanga.
To my unyielding dismay, however; tenancy of the prime property just north of my mouth in the centre of the nasal district, has been imposed by another would be resident.
Gunther.
Gunther made his pending arrival known by invoking a deceivingly healthy shade of cherry red upon my nose. His rosie shades masquerading as festive welcome were swiftly unveiled as locked and loaded pistols of puss. With the rouge rouse of my nose a common knowledge memory, the ugly and true features of Gunther have now been revealed.
The golden dome of Gunther Palace is beginning to crown and the twin guns of Pinch & Pop are at the ready. But, I have learned to pick my battles as I have my nose. That is, with enthusiastic vigor blended withsubtleanonymity. As ruler of the Nasal District and surrounds, I’m ordering the guns to stand down. For this, ladies and gentleman, will be a war of attrition.
The observable universe has a diameter of 93 billion light years. Now take some time to digest that figure. Don’t just cast a shrugging fancy at it. In fact, go back to the start and read it again… but then ignore this sentence, because re-reading this sentence will probably only annoy and then infuriate you. This one too.
When you turn on your bedroom light tonight, allocate a thought to how quickly the light moved from the bulb to the rest of the room. Now think how far that light would get in a few more seconds. What about a minute? What about a year! Multiplied by 93,000,000,000! That’s the distance we’re talking about here folks. I point this out to provide you, the educated and/or blind drunk reader, some sort of scope in order to cope with the scale of what I want to talk to you about. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a theory.
Theories. Most people think of crazy, frizzy haired basement dwellers when the word ‘theory’ is uttered, written or inferred. And usually prefixed with ‘conspiracy’. Then there are other Theories that are more credible and respected. Arguably, the most famous of which is the Theory of Evolution.
In my brief three tenths of a century, ambling around this fantastic, enjoyable, challenging, passionate yet ultimately meaningless existence, I’ve drawn a conclusion or two on certain aspects of planet Earth, the solar system in which it exists, the Galaxy in which it exists and the human race’s place amongst it all. Before you roll your eyes and log into the Facebook (the mathematical centre of the Universe), please hear me out. (ha! Change the word ‘hear’ to ‘lick’ and this rant goes wonderfully blue!).
Focus, take the strain, and stay with me through the following mega-stats that will funnel us towards my theory. The earth is 4.55 billion years old. Homo-sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. At just 72,000 years ago, there were still less than 1000 humans on the entire planet. You can fit that many people on three Boeing 747s. Or 90 times that amount of people into the Melbourne Cricket Ground! It then took 70,000 years to expand the world population to just 100,000, the same size as the Victorian country town of Bendigo. Again, don’t glaze these figures. Breath it in. Just over 2000 years later, in 1804, we hit the 1 billion mark. A milestone. A true testament to the human’s ability to master its surroundings and establish itself, devastatingly, at the top of the food chain.
Consider those figures. Sip on those figures. Swirl it around. Taste it. Now spit it out all over the place with alarm. Because the time it took for humans to populate this planet with its most recent billion was 12 years.
12 years!
Recap: It took from 72,000 years ago to the year 1804 to go from 1000 people to the first billion. It took from 1987 to 1999 for the most recent billion. In fact, since I was born, the global population has increased by over 2 billion.
Now some of you will already know of this information. You may have different figures but the pattern of increase will still be very similar and equally gob smacking. However, there will be many of you who have simply never been in a state of mind to consider it just yet. And believe me, the more you consider it, the more cloudy and maddening it all becomes. It’s in these times of endless pondering, I find it’s best to have distractions like playstation, pay tv or a hungry panther prowling your kitchen. Anything to get your mind of things.
Before I go further, or nearer, I understand there will be those who have completely different opinions on the origin of our species and the timelines I’ve discussed so far. As an apathetic atheist, I want to make it clear I’m completely comfortable with your beliefs. I envy you. I’d much rather be playing twister with angels than decomposing. But so help me Easter Bunny, if you ever force me to re-read your “How to make a Universe in Seven Days: for idiots” book, I just might push you in front of a moving pope mobile and you shall meet your gloriously celebrated maker. I suggest you ask him, “Hey Lord, if you’re real, what the fuck is with you allowing Shane to push me in front of the pope mobile like that?!”. But I digress. This is not going to be a God debate. That’s for another time. Maybe after three bottles of wine… not two. This is about my theory. This is about my address on the mind melting figures I just gave you a few paragraphs ago.
A billion in 12 years. Why?
Part Two: Prologue
While reading this tripe, please remember it’s little more than musings. Due to most of you being more academic than me, I suspect my words will be analysed, deconstructed and found to be naught but guff. That’s actually a good way to think about this. Don’t take it too seriously. Be open minded. I’m not selling anything. Unless you’re in the market for a 76cm rear projection flatscreen that occasionally works and is heavier than an opera of Oprahs.
There could be reason for this population explosion. No other creature on earth dominates the planet like we do. Millions of us circumnavigate the entire globe every day. Our presence is comprehensive, consummate, absolute, unrivalled. There are no predators keeping us in check. That only makes sense right? Every other animal is being hunted by another, therefore its population rarely expands exponentially. But we’re at the top. So who here is really surprised that we just kept on going? It’s only natural. With that said, I feel there could be a reason for our sudden expansion and incredible rate of technological advancement. Like I said, if you’re open minded and happy to read the absurd words of a man who never went to university and never studied anything remotely like this, please continue.
I side with the theory of evolution. Truly I do. But I think we’ll never fully understand it. Not in the next several tens of thousands of years anyway. In the same way a cave man couldn’t possibly comprehend the internet, stem cell research or the wheel. And my theory is this.
Part Two: The Theory… (it’s really quite brief)
The role of the human race on planet earth is to act as the big red emergency button. We are break glass in case of emergency. We are the ejector button. The life raft. The flare.
The planet is a living organism and everything living on it, whether it thinks it’s living autonomously or not, is dependent on it. The planet is thinking about retirement. The glass has been broken. The flare has been lit. The big red eject button has been hit within the last few thousand years, which sounds like a long time but considering the Earth’s 4.55 billion year age, it’s really only just happened.
As part of the emergency procedure, the humans are multiplying like crazy and as a result, advancing their technology as well. They honed their skills on exploration by setting about in the oceans and discovering and colonising new lands. They refined machines that once took many months to travel around the globe to now complete the trip in a matter of hours. They even poked about on the moon. Once again I stress, all this advancement has happened in the relative blink of an eye as far as time is concerned. And we’re getting better and more efficient at doing EVERYTHING all the time. Transport. Communication. Production. We’re finding shortcuts and alternatives all over the place. Exploring and colonising is now second nature so to speak. It seems only natural that the minds of tomorrow, of next year, of next millennia will explore and colonise more than just the lands of this planet. Perhaps the land of another planet. And I’m not saying Mars. Think bigger. Our solar system is based upon just one star. There are up to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. There are an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the part of the universe that we have the capabilities to observe at this point. Are you suggesting that there isn’t one inhabitable planet orbiting the other 50000000000000000000000 stars in the observable Galaxy? Naïve don’t you think?
With resources depleted, Mother earth wants to retire and wants us out of the house. It’s time for us kids to find our own place.
(so are you actually thinking about any of this or are you simply in a rush to comment that I used "Part Two" twice? Shows where your priorities are you blazing simpleton - YOU FAIL)
That should be word has been pulsing though my veins like a blood thirsty great white of bad mood all day. And drawing upon everything I know as an Australian, I tamed the beast by stopping by the bottle-o on the way home. I methodically selected the alcohol based on how close the price tag was to the change in my pocket. The Jaws theme music still circled as a fore thought... until I saw the Jim Beam branded Chili Chips. For those of you who haven't tried them, stop fucking wasting your life and get them now. Right now. Don't even finish this senten........
I know! How good are they! And thanks for coming back by the way. So anyway, I picked up the last 2 bags of these delicious treats in the store. That didn't impress the horrible woman who was also making a dash for the chips. Now I beat her by a good 3 count but she still protested with, "oh good one mate, take the last two bags in the whole store why don't ya... asshole". She then turned to her equally trogloditish companion, a he-she of sorts as it was difficult to tell and muttered, "can't believe he took both of them". Like there's some sort of limit we're all supposed to abide by, I thought.
Don't forget, it's me, giant, generally angry anyway and today I've got the vicious great white of bad moods coursing through my being. I just might have thrown her one of the bags if she just displayed some genuine disappointment and not unmitigated bitchery.
I calmly pointed out, "try the BBQ ones, I hear they're also quite good". She replied, "really?". I responded in a heartbeat, "no not really, these things right here are the best in the world and I have them... both bags. I might even throw one of them out when I get home just to make the surviving bag even more exclusive".
The expression on her toilet of a face indicated she was not impressed with my victory.
So I smugly saunter to the check out. As the help is costing my purchase, the troggles line up next to me, (yeah, by now I've nicknamed them and given them a back story in a Turkish circus). As I complete my transaction, I see she has placed a 6pack of bundy cans on the counter in my glorious wake. I collect my Jim Beam Chili chips, (available as most good liquor stores), and lean over her and say, "Bundy hey?". The disgruntled troggle grunts, "yeah". I lean a little closer, look down at the cans, then look back up at her and say, "what, all six of them? That's a bit rude"
Shangatopia – if you can’t handle the truth, you’ll like it here.
Shangatopia – a catchy phrase to follow.
When it rains, it rains flour and dough and when the sun shines ever so brightly, all that dough becomes croissants. This is Shangatopia.
Lose yourself, then find yourself pants-less on the foot of a strangers bed – at Shangatopia.
Practice what I preach – but don’t get better at it than me.
Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re still pretty ugly.
Feeling tired, emotionally volatile and lacking self esteem? Click the back button on your browser now you good for nothing, moody troll!
Life tastes like a rainbow at Shangatopia – minus the short bearded ginger fellow with that pot of gold. We all laughed at him when he didn’t buy shares but look at him now!
Shangatopia – where all your troubles mate and multiply.
You can’t spell Shangatopia without letters.
Shangatopia – a place about as real as your new year’s resolution… fatty.
Shangatopia – the answer to your prayers… if your prayers consist of some light reading before surfing for porn.
Your dreams come true at Shangatopia – because you dreamt of surfing the net when you should be doing other things right?
Don’t surf the net. Fluff it, at Shangatopia.
To get your free Shangatopia tattoo, write ‘Shangatopia on a post it note, stick it to your forehead, go to the tattooist, and offer him a reach around.
Shangatopia t-shirts, now available where all blank white shirts and marker pens are sold.
Violate your mind at Shangatopia.
Shangatopia – it’s a late night Maccas run for your mind.
Shangatopia – where society grabs it’s ankles.
Leave a comment pointing out your favourite or submit your own!
My name is Shane Butler. On September 8th 1978, I was born in a frenzy of drugs and screaming and most likely conceived in much the same way just over 9 months earlier. I’m an only child and had only child friends while growing up. This, coupled with my genetic makeup has lead to my current state of mind being, shall we say, alternative. Another result of genetics is my sizeable frame. Standing at six feet and seven inches tall, this statistic, for what seemed the longest time, was my very identity. Today, it remains prominent, certainly, but more facets to “that tall guy” have been revealed over the years. Shangatopia is essentially an online scrap book of my musings, an e-sandbox for my theories and more often than not, a cesspool for my incessant ranting. Oh, I’m sarcastic and hilariously bitter about most things.
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