» It's not me, it's the drugs talking

Happy marriage in suburbia
Talk to anyone these days and you know it seems
Eventually they'll tell you about some scenes
when they were living with a druggie friend
You gotta look real serious, or at least pretend
While with a reverend awe, like they're reading a psalm
they tell you about some jerk poking a needle in his arm
and dramatically conclude 'you know, the guy was a freak'
but it's the eighth drug story you've heard this week

Well I knew a guy; he tops the lot
He wasn't on heroin, crack or pot
But it was worse than anything out of 'Monkey Grip'
He did the Happy Marriage In Suburbia trip

You know I still don't know how this guy never got busted
for being so incredibly well-adjusted
While we were all shoving chemicals up our nose,
he was out in the garden with a watering hose

At first only small things began to go wrong
He wouldn't turn up when we were having a bong
But sooner than later things began to fall apart
He'd take his girl out regular, eat a la carte

He'd look healthy and happy, it was like an alarm
He was collapsing like the veins in my arm
I'll never forget that terrible night, oh God above
When he told us he was very much in love

So they both bought a house, there was no turning back
They got into it the week that I got into crack
His face was never so ravaged with addiction
As the week he showed me his brand new kitchen

I'd sometimes go 'round there with a cap or two of horse
tell him 'kick the habit, get a divorce,'
'your wife's pregnant again,' I plead 'this'll make three
if you have another kid you're sure to OD'

But he's not even listening, he's in some delirium
His wife's doing the dishes and he's begun clearing 'em
'I love my kids, I'm happy' he'd say satisfied
But don't you know, on the nappy he was crucified

He's dead now, of course, needless to say
Family wiped off by a drunk going the wrong way
Oh, how many times has it been written, said or sung
that if you live monogamous, expect to die young

So, you can get into crack, smack, dope or speed
but don't take marriage 'cause this is where it'll lead
You experience real happiness, both physical and mental
and if you die it'll be purely accidental
tism
(Tue 20th Dec 2005, 10:53, More)

» The Police

FTP is the best protocol
Ive had a fair few run-ins with coppers in various parts of the globe. I once was held at gunpoint in Grand chenier, lousiana, (flattened by the last hurricane) with a van full of drugs for what turned out to be a minor indecent exposure - my mate had been seen pissing on a tree earlier that morning. They never searched the van, thank fuck! Have been pulled over in my uni days with a back seat full of chemistry apparatus Id stolen mainly for use as beer glasses, but unfortunately was sitting with a bong and jar of grass. I was detained by the Swiss Guard for kicking a football(australian) inside the vatican. I even worked for 2 years developing e-learning for UK coppers, coming to work with 1500 cops in uniform everyday took a bit of getting used to. I just rehashed there offline bullshit. eg. in Misuse of Drugs module: "LSD causes drowsiness" (sure...after 8 hours of heavy tripping!).
The funniest cops I saw were the ones when I was working in a remote mining town in Western Australia. Fair play to them there was 3 coppers responsible for an area the size of Spain (but with less people than Kings Lynn). One of them, Macca, used to drive the three hours to drink at the mine, as the the beer was only a dollar a can (about 40p). He tended to drink by himself but sometimes I'd chat with him and he was a good laugh. He'd start at 5 and get gradually wasted. I'd sometimes go down the dirt track he drove in on the next morning, and I'd regularly see his cop car about 100m off the road somewhere along the way, sometimes in ditch or against the trees. He'd pass out at the wheel and the car would just drift of the road until it naturally came to a stop. I went for my licence with him. I failed the eye test and got one question right on the theory. For the test he had me drive him one block to the bottle shop so he could buy a carton of beer. I 'm now licenced to drive anything from buses to 500 ton dump trucks. Look out!
(Fri 23rd Sep 2005, 16:09, More)

» Political Correctness Gone Mad

some terms have a loaded meaning in one country
while being a harmless contraction in another. when i came from australia and first started working in london after watching a cricket match on the weekend, I yelled across the office to a south african work mate: "Did you see us beat the Pakis on the weekend?"
I got put in front of a disciplinery board and tried to explain that "paki" had no more negative association than "aussies" or "windies" in australia and was used in cricket ads on the telly. But each time I used the word I could see them cringe like i'd flung a turd on their desks. I kept my job but it was a quick lesson.
(Fri 23rd Nov 2007, 16:15, More)

» Abusing freebies

Vegas, baby!
a mate and i were doing a road trip through the states in a van. though we were on a budget we decided while we were in vegas to get a room in the tropicana. the rooms were pretty cheap anyway, as they really want you there to gamble. We discovered that many of the casinos have all you can eat buffets, filled with fat yanks in hawaiian shorts gorging themselves. Tropicana for breakfast, Circus Circus for lunch, etc. To recover some of our outlay, we thought what a great idea to stock up on food for the next few weeks. We were still working our way through the drugs we'd bought in san francisco trying to re-create a Hunter S thompson kind of thing, and I was starting to get bad paranioa believing i was being constantly filmed. not entirely unjustified as we were in a casino and the drug laws in Nevada are particularly harsh. Nevertheless, we would take a seat at these buffets each carrying a full size backpack and duffel bag, and proceed to fill them up in multiple trips empting our plates into them under the table every go around. In hindsight, we probably over-estimated the time it takes for 40 chicken drumsticks, half a duffel bag full of pizza slices, and 5 supermarket bags of caesar salad to begin to putrify.
(Fri 9th Nov 2007, 11:31, More)

» What's the most horrific thing you've seen?

Cats
My dad works for the pharmaceutical industry, whoring himself to the various multinationals. He was pushing one particular drug that inhibits the gastric reflux response ie. it stops you from spewing your guts up.
To really sell it, he had a video clip on his laptop. It featured a frontal shot of cat (ive forgotten the medical reason it had to be a cat) that was clamped to a board. The moggy also had the top half of its skull removed and electrodes wires placed on it's exposed brain. A large syringe full of a white milky substance was pushed into the poor puss's mouth and injected by gloved hands into it's stomach. The reflux centre of the cat's brain is stimulated and I watch as the cat vomits up the milk. The same cat is again featured after the drug has been administered, and this time, no chunder (though there is a fair bit of dribble). The whole time watching I was transfixed by the wide helpless pussycat eyes, and they continue to haunt me still.
(Fri 22nd Jun 2007, 12:12, More)