We’re all about the numbers here on Planet Man.
And by numbers, I mean statistics, not mathematics. Because, I mean, really — if God had actually intended for us to pay attention to math, He would have given us more fingers and less calculators.
I took a Math 12 class in my final year of high school. I lasted three weeks. It took that long for me to figure out the teacher wasn’t speaking a foreign language — apparently that’s what calculus sounds like. I dropped out of the class to join the choir. If I told you my singing has been compared to the noise a cat makes after catching its tail in a woodchipper, you will understand how much I hate math.
Statistics? Ah, now we’re talking (excuse me while I shiver with excitement. OK. Better now.)
By statistics, I mean sports stats, and by sports I mean hockey. If you’ve read my profile, then you know I’m all about the being hit with several ounces of vulcanized rubber moving very, very fast. Preferably not in the lower groin. Or the face.
At one time, I took great pleasure in memorizing Jacques Plante’s goals-against average over my morning corn flakes. Mind you, that was when Jacques Plante was still playing. And, you know, still alive.
Statistics are useful in so many other ways as well. For instance, did you know I’ve seen 68.9 per cent of the movies that opened in Vancouver in 2001? I know — sometimes I even impress myself. About 96.8 per cent of the time, actually.
I keep track of our household budget, which has the added benefit of allowing me to watch our dwindling resources and pretty much calculate the exact date Viking Woman is going to kick my unemployed freelance bum out the door.
In fact, half the fun of writing a blog is in the numbers. There is a tab labelled Blog Stats that lets me see how many unique visits I’ve had each day. (That number would be a lot greater if the bad people at wordpress.com would count my own visits. Talk about your party poopers!)
The Blog Stats show things like how, on April 23 this year, I hit my all-time daily high of 84 visits. Or how, in October 2008, I averaged eight visits a day.
The idea, as every blogger offering to trade his firstborn for a single Google ad will tell you, is to attract great hordes of visitors. There are several ways to do this, including being an excellent writer with important things to say, but I’ve already tried that and, let me tell you, it was barely worth the effort.
Another way to boost visitor numbers is to submit your blog’s name to a site called condron.us. I’m not sure how this works, exactly, but every time I do so, my numbers go up.
How long those visits last (I’m assuming they range in duration from “Hey, this guy is talented. And good-looking.” to a low of “Where’s the boobies you promised? What a load of bollocks!”) can also be calculated. Well, it could if I was using a program called Google Analytics. But I’ve tried three times to read the instructions and each time I ended up lying in the dark with a cold compress pressed to my overheated brain.
In the meantime, I can always use my skill with numbers to do other chores. Measuring things, for instance. We’re very adept at that task here on Planet Man. Heck we don’t even need any tools — we can do it all by eye.
For example, ladies, did you know this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is nine inches?
Amazing, eh? And you know it must be true because men hardly ever lie. And, by hardly ever, I mean only about 90.7 per cent of the time. But who’s counting?
Ten million reasons why I’m smiling today.
May 22, 2009
I don’t know what’s leading off your evening news, but here in New Zealand we’re all abuzz about a bank’s $10 million mistake.
This situation might be resolved by the time you read this, but these are the basic facts: a gas station owner in Rotorua applied for a $10,000 overdraft from his bank to help him and his business partner survive a bit longer in the current recession. Somehow, when the money was transferred, the bank employee must have pressed a bit too hard on the zero key because $10,000 suddenly became $10 million.
What would you do if your bank account was suddenly fattened by money you knew had no reason to be there and was not your property?
In the case of these two men, they chose to disappear from the country, along with, reportedly, $6 million of that cash.
Interestingly enough, one fellow did not bother to take along his girlfriend, who had, according to the news, been working at the gas station for free just to help out.
I’m guessing he is now cut off for life.
I’m guessing, with his $3 million share of the pot, he doesn’t much care.
The two men, now being eagerly sought by various grumpy authority figures, are Asian. I only bring this up because it means they can easily blend into any one of several heavily-populated countries — preferably one without an extradition treaty with New Zealand — and not raise any eyebrows. Well, except for the fact that, while their neighbours own one goat apiece, they would own 10,000 goats.
So, again, what would you do with such an unexpected windfall? Hint: The correct answer is “Give it all back.”
But, just for the sake of argument, what if, like these two gentlemen, you decided it was payback time for the banking system? What if you had cursed for years about how banks plead poverty whenever they raise their fees by a dollar every time you blink, and then turn around and trumpet a year-end profit of billions?
Wouldn’t you feel — just a teensy-weensy bit — that this banking error was somehow karmic? That absconding with the better part of $10 million, obtained without resorting to wearing your wife’s pantyhose over your head or taking the risk of reprising any scene from Dog Day Afternoon, was simply a long-overdue payback for every time Big Business took you up the bum?
For the sake of argument, how would you go about accomplishing such a feat? This, more than any other detail, is the background I’d like to know. They were, after all, managing a gas station, for chrissakes, one that was sinking into oblivion. We’re not talking rocket scientists here. They pump gas not repair the Hubble telescope.
How did they know to get away with this? Could you do it?
Obviously, the clock would be ticking on their operation. At some point, the bank manager was bound to wander into the vault, notice an empty space on one of shelves where $10 million had once resided, and proceed to get very agitated.
I’m guessing this is where the Internet would come in handy. Maybe you’d start with about.com and ask how one goes about transferring large sums of money from your bank account to a bank in another country. Because — and, again I’m guessing here — you don’t just stuff that kind of cash into your shorts and walk onto an airplane. Ideally, as I mentioned above, that destination country doesn’t bother wasting its resources rounding up miscreants who’ve been bad boys in New Zealand.
Once you’ve found that country and arranged to transfer the money (and, somehow $4 million fell out of the virtual sack during said transaction), you’d need to hope your passport was current, purchase a ticket and start packing, all without raising the suspicions of, say, your girlfriend.
Those tasks almost sound too daunting to take on. But hard work does have its own rewards, in this case six million rewards. These guys have shown a clever streak and, simply from a logistics point-of-view, I hope their little adventure lasts awhile longer. At least until they’ve spent millions on wine, women and gambling, and then wasted whatever was left over.
I actually encountered a similar situation years ago. This was the ’70s, mind you, before ATMs, before the Internet, when Canadian banks were open Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. on Fridays. Arrive at 6:01 and you faced a cashless weekend.
It was only a quick perusal of my printed bank statement that alerted me to the fact I seemed to have an extra thousand dollars in my account. Being anal retentive organized, I knew that had to be a mistake. When I finally made it to the front of the queue and stated my situation to the teller (remember those?), she perused some of the bank’s papers and then proceeded to x out the deposit notice on my statement with an exaggerated flourish.
No “oops.” No apology. No explanation. No indication of gratitude for pointing out the error. The bank simply took the money back and sent me out the door, cavalier bastards that they are.
So, would I have taken the $10 million and run? Actually, I just might have, if only for the challenge. Talk about your amazing race.
On a related note, the second item on the news was how the four major New Zealand power companies, having overcharged their customers to the tune of $4.3 billion over the past six years, will not have to pay any of that back.
Let me get this straight. Rip off a bank: bad. Rip off a widow with 30 handicapped children: OK.
I guess it all depends on who’s getting screwed. I’ll just be over here, bent over my power bill. And biting my pillow.
UPDATE: This above blog entry was based on information contained in a May 22 story on the msn.nzherald.co.nz website. A followup story posted today (May 23 in New Zealand) contains more details. The bank in question (Westpac) is how claiming the main suspect in this incident, Leo Gao, only managed to spirit $3.8 million — of the original $10 million — out of the country. And, while this story says Gao is now in Hong Kong, last night’s TV news stated he has fled to China.
No word on the whereabouts of Gao’s business partner from the gas station, but now comes news that Gao’s mother, brother, girlfriend and her daughter have also disappeared.
It appears Mr. Gao opted to take along extra baggage after all.
Bodysurfing the new wave of publishing.
May 19, 2009
Jack’s back. Jack Nolan, that is. So is Nurse Heather. And that cheeky monkey Maina Rima. And, oh yeah, the League of Jackals is still up to no good.
Five years after PublishAmerica first printed it, and about three years after I took possession of its rights, my first published novel, Brown Girls, is once again available to the world.
I have seen the future and it’s spelled Kindle. And ePub and LRF and PDB. I have seen the future and it does not include hard copies of books unless your name is King or Brown or Grisham or Rushdie.
For the rest of us commoners, the future is all about the ebook. And so, after years of enduring the rejections of callous literary agents, I have decided to skip right past the naysayers and shove Brown Girls straight into that future.
Which would explain why my first-born now resides at smashwords.com and can been sampled or purcahsed via http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937.
For you still stuck in the here and now (and how so very quaintly 21st century of you), the manuscript is also available in HTML, JavaText and Plan Text, allowing it to be read onscreen or printed off so you can be transported to the Cook Islands while comfortably tucked into your favourite chair.
Those of you who were kind enough to buy the 2004 edition will note that version 2.0 has been re-edited and polished and, unlike its author, is now slimmer and trimmer, thanks to the punting of some 17,000 words. Included in that cut was every one of the F-bombs, meaning my mother can now safely put down the latest Danielle Steele novel and finally read her No. 1 son’s tome without fear of encountering words you can’t say in church.
If you’re thinking, “I bought the original, it was excellent, now where the hell is that sequel you’ve been promising us for five years?”, you’ll be pleased to know The Blue Beneath is progressing rather nicely, and will continue to do so if you recommend that all your friends buy the Brown Girls ebook, thus proving to Viking Woman that, yes, I can earn money by sitting on my arse at home all day.
That’s the key to marketing ebooks — getting the word out. Unlike hard copies where, with a bit of time and patience, a buyer will eventually stumble across your masterpiece in a bookstore, the World Wide Web is a great big haystack and my book, no matter how significant to me, is but a mere needle.
Placing the book on smashwords.com is a good first step but now, as you might expect, everyone with one knuckle and a keyboard is starting to turn away from POD and vanity publishing and going the ebook route as well, thus avoiding all those pesky editors and agents and publishers who, obviously, have no appreciation for truly great literary art.
Which means Smashwords’ inventory grows larger by the day and, at the risk of sounding mean-spirited, you do have to sieve through a lot of gravel to find the gold. Hopefully, with the help of you, my faithful blog readers, people will manage to discover and buy and read and enjoy Brown Girls.
I will keep you posted on sales figures, if they happen, and comments, if they are filed (and please feel free to add your own review, good or bad, to the Brown Girls page — all feedback is welcomed and encouraged).
My plan, you see, is to sell a million copies. Hey, if Dan Brown can do it, anyone can.
The second part of my plan, once the royalty cheques start to roll in, is to retire to an island in the South Pacific and live in a huge mansion from where I can watch starlets frolic on a clothing-optional beach while nubile Nubian women fan me with palm fronds and attend to my every need and desire.
And then . . .
And then Viking Woman elbows me awake because I’ve been snoring and I realize it’s all been a dream. Well, except for the clothing-optional part. Somehow in the night I’ve managed to lose my pajamas. I’m going to blame the Nubians.
Through some wizardry that I, and everyone else here on Planet Man, cannot possibly comprehend, my computer defaults to msn.nz once I sign out of my Hotmail account. This is a news site for New Zealand and something I only really glance at on my way to check for Facebook messages.
But that glance did reveal msn.nz has a feature where its readers are encouraged to vote Yes or No in answer to a daily question. Usually these queries are fairly innocuous: “Are you sleeping in a cardboard box yet, you unemployed bum?” Or, “Is Auckland the best ever city in the country or what?”
That sort of fluff. But this weekend, the question was, “Have you ever abused a dangerous driver?”
Now, that one did catch my attention.
It also summoned this memory:
We’re in Viking Woman’s car. She’s driving because, well, it’s her car. We’re not yet married and so are (supposedly) on our best behaviour, the idea being to impress the other person before releasing the beast once the wedding vows have been uttered and the wills notarized.
“That knob in the pickup truck behind me is tailgating,” Viking Woman says at one point.
“Just keep driving the speed limit and, if he’s in that much of a hurry, he’ll pass us,” I say.
“I am driving the speed limit,” she says through gritted teeth. “And he’s still right on my bumper. I’m starting to get pissed off.”
“He’s just being a jerk,” I say. “We’ll be OK as long as you don’t do anything stupid.”
“Bugger this!” Viking Woman says, turning sharply into a driveway, which just happens to belong to the local cinema.
And, of course, Mr. Pickup Truck turns in as well. Except, where we swing wide to the right, he drives straight ahead and stops in front of the theatre to read the marquee.
“OK,” I say, ” he’s gone. Now we can . . . “
Viking Woman slams on the brakes, bolts from the car and trots up to the fellow’s window. She raps sharply on the glass and, when he lowers the window, says something that causes the man to recoil.
And then she’s back in the car and looking at me staring at her.
“What?”
“Jesus, lady, what did you say to him?”
“I simply stated,” she says, “that it was obvious from the way he was driving that he has a small penis.”
I know what you’re thinking:
“Alright! High five! Way to go! And that’s why they call her Viking Woman, sucka!”
This is what I was thinking:
“He’s going to ignore Viking Woman, the person who actually insulted him, and instead come around to my side of the car, rip the door off, grab me by the end of my mullet and hit me so hard my grandchildren will bleed.”
Fortunately for the well-being of future Irelands, the doofus simply sat in his truck, stunned by the verbal onslaught, and then drove off. Very slowly.
I’m guessing he was several blocks away before he thought of a good comeback. By that time, my heartbeat had nearly returned to normal and my defensive posture — frozen in place, eyes bulging — had relaxed enough for me to check my shorts.
Several years have passed now but Viking Woman still does the bulk of the driving. For the most part, I let her go out alone. I think I’ll live longer that way.
The hair of the dog that sat in my chair.
May 13, 2009
Viking Woman returned from a recent women’s expo waving a handful of brochures advertising all manner of ways to improve her life.
“Lose Ugly Wrinkles From Your Face!” (appearance medicine clinic)
“Lose Ugly Inches From Your Hips!” (fitness centre)
“Lose 200 Pounds From Your Couch!” (divorce lawyer)
There was also a notice from a group looking to adopt out greyhounds whose racing days were over. Those devious, diabolical people had the gall to actually display the dogs at the expo and, of course, Viking Woman just had to stop and coo over them.
“They are sooooo cute,” she told me.
“Did they give you the puppy-dog eyes?” I asked.
“The what?”
“You know, the Bambie Eyes.”
“As a matter of fact, they did,” she said.
“And?”
“And now I want one.”
Damn those eyes! They work every time.
The good news is the greyhounds managed to distract Viking Woman from her desire to own an Irish Wolfhound which are, from what I’ve seen on the Internet, the size of our car. They are massive. They are huge. Which means they eat huge and they poop huge.
Before Viking Woman could give me her version of the Bambie Eyes (a ploy that nearly always works), we were fortunate enough to have Ella come and stay.
Ella belongs to one of our neighbours, who was going out of town for the weekend and asked us to dog-sit.
Ella is a mix between something brown and something black. She seemed like a perfectly fine dog during those times when she accompanied her owner over for an occasional cuppa tea with us. A pat on the head, a bum scratch and off-ya-go.
But things are so much different when that visit lasts for four days. Don’t get me wrong — Ella is a good dog. Nothing wrong with her at all. The problem, you see, is me. (“That’s news?” I can hear Viking Woman muttering in the next room.)
I’m not an animal person. I’ve had a few cats wander in and out of my adult life, and one stinky-ass lapdog Viking Woman picked up in the Cook Islands (OK, to be fair, the stink was a skin infection, but still). We fed them. We petted them. We bonded. And then they died. God’s cruel joke or a reminder that Death comes for us all at some point and the best you can hope for is that it doesn’t happen when you’re in the litter box?
Which meant, in order for Ella and I to get along — Viking Woman wriggled out of all commitments with the convenient “I’ve got to go to work” excuse — adjustments would have to be made. And, because those of us who live on Planet Man consider ourselves to be marginally more intelligent than our so-called best friends, I realized those adjustments would have to be made by me.
And so I played Run With The Stick in the backyard, a game that consisted of Ella bounding around with a piece of kindling in her mouth while I chased her. Followed shortly thereafter by me lying on my back in the grass, clutching my chest, and bleeding from my lungs. No one told me dogs are bad for your health.
I picked up fresh turds with my hands encased in latex gloves. Yes, there was no direct contact with my skin. And, yes, the fecal material still felt warm and squishy right through the gloves.
I did my best not to gag when cutting slices off a fat, greasy roll of dog food which, I’m nearly positive, is made up entirely of compressed lips and arseholes. Whose lips, I’m not sure. I’m also not sure I want to know.
I bit my tongue when Ella decided the house’s cold, uninsulated floor was a tad uncomfortable even for her fur coat and, instead, slept in one of our easy chairs, ensuring I would later spend an entire morning vacuuming up each individual hair.
On the plus side, Ella did scare off the neighbourhood cat that was making a habit of spending nights curled up in another of our chairs, thus saving me some extra housework.
But was that one plus enough to make me want another dog in our lives?
Let me just put it this way: I told Viking Woman there will be no greyhound in this house while I’m living here.
Wait a minute — Viking Woman just walked by carrying my suitcase.
That can’t be good.
Gunshots a stark reminder of life as we know it.
May 10, 2009
There are several reasons why Viking Woman and I enjoy living in New Zealand.
Included on that list is a game we like to call “Guess Where We’re From.”
Impressively, most people in Napier pick us out as Canadians as soon as we speak, although the reasonings for that correct guess are varied.
One lady told me she can tell a Canadian accent because it sounds French.
Another said our accents are similar to those from the southern U.S.
Considering we’re from British Columbia, many, many leagues from the east of Canada and the south of America, we can only wonder about the strange pathway words must take as they travel from the ear to the brain.
Another tick in New Zealand’s Pro column is that its police force does not carry firearms. After nearly two years in California, where nothing puts an exclamation point on a dispute quite like a bullet, it is comforting to come to a country where sane people live.
Not that there aren’t violent crimes committed here. As long as the world contains shitrats, there will be violence. And, yes, some of that involves guns. And that’s when the police’s Armed Offenders Squad springs into action, complete with body armour and automatic weapons.
But the ordinary beat cop — the neighbourhood constable — still trusts that commonsense and respect for the law and authority will rule the day.
And then something horrific happens and it all goes pear-shaped.
Napier led off the national TV news broadcasts for several days this past week. The Art Deco City was on the front page of every newspaper in the country.
Details are still sketchy, and I won’t even pretend to know all the facts, but it appears that a fellow, returning to his Hospital Hill residence after walking his dog, found three policemen executing a drug search warrant in his house. Something about cannabis, apparently.
The man suddenly goes apeshit, a gun is produced, shots are fired, one policeman is killed, and his two partners and a neighbour are forced to crawl to safety, bleeding from bullet wounds.
The shooter, as it turns out, is ex-military, an avid pig hunter and the owner of a large cache of weapons and ammunition. There is also rumours of steroid abuse. There are also rumours of explosives and booby traps.
The gunman’s house has a 360-degree view and that advantage gave him a clear shot at anyone attempting to approach. There are many unfortunate aspects to this incident, perhaps the saddest being that the police were not able to retrieve the body of their fallen comrade for nearly two days. I can’t begin to imagine the anguish of staring at a dead friend and being absolutely helpless to return this good man to his family.
Heavily-armed police were brought in from around the country. The Army produced a pair of LAVs (Light Armoured Vehicles). Neighbours of the gunman were either evacuated or forced to hide in a far corner of their dwellings through the entire duration of the standoff.
In the end, the nightmare lasted 51 hours. When the police finally did enter the house, after observing zero activity for several hours, they found the gunman dead in a barricaded bedroom. We all assume it was self-inflicted but, again, I’ll wait for the official announcement.
Things like this don’t happen in New Zealand. Things like this don’t happen in Napier. And things like this don’t happen this close to us.
That’s right: the gunman was holed up in a house not five minutes from where we live. There is nothing heroic about that statement — we reside at the bottom of Hospital Hill and were in no danger of being injured unless those rumoured explosives turned Hospital Hill into Hospital Hollow.
But the road we live on — little more than a country lane, really — provides one of the few accesses to the top of Hospital Hill. As a result, the police set up a roadblock at the end of it — complete with an officer bearing a large gun — and we had to talk our way in and out.
We heard every shot fired. We heard every gas canister launched.
One of our neighbours was so freaked by the experience that he took his wife and daughter off to his mother’s place in another, less involved, part of town.
Once we did leave our street, it was to find large sections of Napier cordoned off and closed down, to allow access for police, military and emergency vehicles, and to keep the media and assorted looky-lous at a safe distance should anything nasty go down.
I’m glad it’s all over (although, as the accompanying photo shows, the “residence” of our street are still living behind a barricade of sorts). I’m thankful no one else was hurt and the dead officer’s family can finally begin the grieving process.
But I’ve also had my eyes opened. When terrible things happen, when a stranger snaps and death descends, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you live.
I’m going to give Viking Woman an extra hug as soon as I post this entry. This close to Ground Zero, we now have a greater insight into the truth behind the cliche about life being precious. It’s as subtle, and as powerful, as a finger on a trigger.
My brain, unfettered by any need to concentrate, tends to wander around like a dog let off its leash, stopping to sniff at anything that even remotely provides a momentary distraction.
Just such an opportunity for idle meanderings arose again yesterday when I took another shift in the laundry room of the seniors’ resthome where I’m employed on a casual basis. Left to my own devices in the large space that sits adjacent to the facility’s former morgue (that creepy banging noise is coming from the dryer, right? Right?), and with no need to actually focus on the job at hand, this thought came unbidden out of the ether to perch on my shoulder and peck at my brain:
The most important person in a work environment is not the boss, it’s not the person whose office affords the best view, it’s not even the person who earns the most bonuses. Rather, it is the person who controls the radio.
When I worked in the advertising department for the Famous Players theatre chain, one of the perks was free passes to movies. On the downside, I was the low man on the office totem pole, meaning my boss got to choose which station the two of us listened to all day while we cut and pasted (literally — by frickin’ hand — I still have the scars from the knife to prove it) the newspaper ads.
This lady liked both kinds of music, country and western. I don’t know which was worse, cutting off my fingertips each day or listening to another singer lament about his lady love taking off with his:
a) pickup truck
b) dog
c) beer
d) best friend
e) all of the above.
This was all in the dark ages before God invented the iPod and so I had no choice but to grit my teeth and concentrate on fighting the urge to hurl myself through the second-floor office window.
The radio was on in the laundry room yesterday and, since I was simply the dogsbody called in to help a shorthanded staff, I did not feel it was my place to start changing channels.
So, once again, I was forced to listen to music that I did not choose. The good news is this channel was playing oldies — not a single twang or Stetson in sight — but the bad news is, with my brain in neutral, I somehow found myself actually listening to the lyrics.
Yes, these were the songs I grew up with. They brought back memories of childhood and school days and riding bikes until dark and having no fear of growing old and weighted down by broken promises and wasted potential.
I could have sung them by memory had I wanted to frighten the cats and yet the real scary part was how ludicrous they sound now. How limited their scope. How they were all about:
a) finding love
b) keeping love
c) losing love
d) rekindling love
e) living happily ever after
f) replaying all the above ad nauseum
I can no longer relate to any of that. All that mushy stuff is a young man’s game. You live long enough, you lose enough pieces of your heart to failed relationships and you start to be more realistic about how this whole romance thing works.
Face it, the absolute truth is this: Every single relationship will end with:
a) marriage
b) breakup
c) murder/suicide
Either way, it’s going to get messy and there will be tears.
So where are the songs I can relate to now, at this stage of my life? The ones with titles like:
a) That Better Not Be the Neighbour’s Cat in My Chair Again
b) I’m Letting the Lawn Grow Out (The Same Goes for My Beard)
c) I Just Showered Last Week (The Dirty Old Man Song)
d) It’s Been Five Minutes, Can We Stop Cuddling Now?
e) You Call It Porn, I Call It Research
I’m going to christen it Reality Radio and I’m going to play it all day. Really loud.
You can do things like that when you have control.
Those of us who reside on Planet Man possess many special talents and, if you give me a minute, I’m sure I can think of a couple.
In the meantime, there is one concept we have never quite grasped — laundry.
When I was a kid, I simply left my clothes scattered in heaps and mounds on the floor and, when I arrived home from school, they had all been cleaned and tucked into drawers or hung in closets. I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m pretty sure it was fairies.
For some reason, those magical creatures seem to have abandoned me. Maybe they were tired after all these years although, considering I own all of one pair of jeans, I don’t think they were exactly overworked. Maybe they were frightened off by Viking Woman. She can be scary at times, usually after I’ve done something she calls “a man thing,” whatever that means.
With no fairies available, Viking Woman took me firmly by the hand and introduced me to that mechanical beast sitting behind the folding doors in our bathroom. It’s called a washing machine because — how cool is this? — it washes clothes. Who knew?
(I know what you’re thinking: John, where is the dryer — which, wait for it, dries clothes — that should be nestled next to the washing thingee? To which I can only reply, well, this is New Zealand, after all, where electricity is expensive and clotheslines are free.)
Operating a washing machine appears rather simple, even by Planet Man standards. You throw clothes in, add some kind of detergent, perhaps some fabric softener, press a button or three, and go have a nap to recuperate from all that effort.
Easy, eh?
Um, no.
Because, apparently, there are light clothes and dark clothes and some rocket scientist has decreed that those two groupings should never mingle. At least not underwater and covered in soap.
And then, as if my brain wasn’t full enough already — as if I wasn’t still struggling to grasp the concept that people, not fairies, clean clothes — Viking Woman threw in the fun fact that “light” does not necessarily mean “white.”
She went on to explain how pink is actually considered a “light” color. At least where women’s, um, dainties, are concerned.
So let me get this straight — there are light and dark colors and then variations of light colors? And people wonder why the residents of Planet Man tend to bumble around with a look of perpetual confusion on their faces. Hello?
I had a further lesson in all things laundry when I spent two days helping out at a seniors’ residence. This is what I learned: after washing and drying, there is a third step and it’s called folding.
Sweet Baby Jesus, is there no end to this madness?
We need to get one thing straight right now: Men scrunch. We roll. We wad. We pull open drawers and jam. We tuck under beds. We pitch into closets.
What we do not do is fold.
But there I was, mouth gaping in wonderment, as Florence demonstrated the art of grasping corners and then drawing them together once, twice, maybe three times. And then smoothing it all down, adding the item to a pile and moving on to the next one. And the next 400 after that.
To my credit, I managed to learn the art of folding towels by lunchtime. Facecloths proved a bit finicky, if only because they’re so small. Sheets — those great flappy bastards — are tricky but doable. In fact, as long as it was square or rectangle, I managed to successfully convert it from a rumpled heap into a tight, neat package.
And then I came to the round tablecloths. Followed by fitted sheets.
Tonight I will pray for the fairies to come back. I will leave muffins at the door as a gift. I will promise to stop making short jokes. I will stop laughing during Tom Cruise movies.
Because I’ve had it with this whole laundry thing.
And, if the fairies refuse to come back, if not even the lure of double chocolate/macadamia nut muffins is enough to convince them to risk the wrath of Viking Woman, then I will have no choice but to become a nudist.
Yes, it will be a bit breezy in the netherlands, what with this being winter and all, but at least I won’t have to worry about figuring out the difference between “light” and “dark.”
That’s because, after a few chilly nights, everything will be blue. And then, when the pieces start to drop off, there will be red. All dark colors — I know that for a fact.
