In the comment section of a previous post, I was asked by MtBrooks “And how did you employ the “batshit crazy foreigner” tactic to get of other trouble?”

Here is the story of just one of the places where I had to employ tactics that I had learned from a Belgian guy called Beet that I met in the southern part of Thailand, on how to deal with threatening situations.

Every now and again in my life, I’ve come across people who are almost Christ-like in their beaming warm countenance, trusting nature and overwhelming desire to be martyred.

Back in 1982, when I was in Chaouen, Morocco, I met one of those “not long for this earth” saints that I was referring to.  He was a mousy blonde, shoulder-length-haired and bearded elf of a man from Montreal.  Sort of like a neo-hippy Gelfling with a French accent. 

I first came across the Gelfling in the cheap hotel that we were both staying at.  The first indication I had that the Gelfling would be seen as the new white meat in town, was as soon as we stepped out of the hotel to go to the markets together.  As is usually the case in Morocco, there were a couple of local guys hanging around the entrance ready to pounce on any hotel guests and offer their services as guides, with the ubiquitous chant of “gid! gid! gid!” 

Finding your way around in Morocco isn’t all that difficult, most of the time.  The towns are usually fairly small with the poorer neighbourhoods at the top of the hill, and the markets and commercial areas at the bottom of the hill.  I’ve never felt the need to have any guidance when I’ve travelled so I just walked right by the guys who were offering their dubious services.  I had taken about five or six paces when I realised the Gelfling was no longer with me, so I turned around, only to see him bailed up by the so-called guides. 

There he was, patiently listening politely to the hustler’s banter.  Deciding that he probably didn’t have the assertiveness to extract himself, I walked up to him and asked him if he really wanted those two guys to be following him around all day and expecting to get some kind of kickback from whatever he buys from the shopkeepers, and then have to pay out a “tip” for the honour at the end of the day?  I could see that the Gelfling was conflicted about what kind of answer he should give me in front of the two “guides. As he dithered and struggled to come up with an answer that would please all parties without causing offence, I just said to him.  “I’ll meet you up the markets” and walked off on my own.

I didn’t see the Gelfling for the rest of the day and when I was heading back to the hotel in the afternoon, I passed by a tea shop, where the two hustlers from the morning was sitting with a few of their friends drinking mint tea.  One of them noticed me and nudged his friend who said something to his other friends (I’d bet it was something like, “watch this”)  as they both got up and made their way towards me.  One of the so-called guides stuck up his hand and barred my way, as he said to me,

“Why you say you no want gid?”

“It is our job!”

“In other country they keel you!” As he made a slashing gesture across his throat with his hand. 

He then took a step forward and stuck his face right up to mine and with as much menace as he could muster, threatened me with, “we keel you!”

Without even thinking, I stepped onto one of his feet and pushed him over with my left hand displaying as much contempt as I could.  I then spat on him and told him he was a dog in Arabic (wah-enta kelp!), and that I would kill him if I ever saw him again.  They both knew I was serious, and they couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

The next morning as I walked out of the hotel with the Gelfling in tow, the two so-called guides were outside waiting, but as soon as they saw me, they made themselves scarce, quick smart. We had decided to walk out of the town to an old ruined mosque. 

 When we got to the very outskirts of town, the juxtaposition of the whitewashed houses with their blue doors against the deep green hills in the background made for quite the picturesque scene. The Gelfling got his camera out and took a photograph.  As soon as the shot was taken and we got ready to move on, out of the blue this speck comes running to us from far off down the road.  As this speck grew larger as it neared us, we could hear that it was yelling something at us.  Within seconds, we had a Moroccan guy in our faces yelling and screaming at us.

“You take photo of my grandfather!”

To which the Gelfling, in his saint like manner, tried to explain that he was taking a photograph of the scenery and the Moroccan guy was so far away that he wasn’t even in the viewfinder when he took the photograph.  The Gelfling then held out his camera so the Moroccan guy could see through the viewfinder thereby demonstrating the truth of what the Gelfling had said.  The guy wasn’t interested in looking through the viewfinder and he just pushed it dismissively out of the way.

“You take photo of my grandfather!”

“The Koran say you not make picture of people!”

“You make picture my grandfather!”

“Give me film!”

All the hullabaloo was starting to attract a crowd, and I could see that the situation was going to get ugly very quickly so I grabbed the Gelfling by his shirt and tried to pull him away.  The Gelfling being a good ambassador of western humanitarianism and decency pulled himself free from my grip and said, “no, no, I want to explain to him”.

Again, the Gelfling lifted up his camera and offered the Moroccan a chance to look through the viewfinder.  This time, the Moroccan knocked the camera out of the way with such force that if it hadn’t been attached to the Gelfling’s neck by its strap it would have hit the ground.  Once again, I grabbed the shirt of the Gelfling said “come on, let’s go, this is going to get real bad, very quickly.”

Unfortunately, the Gelfling seemed hell-bent on martyrdom and he continued to try and get the Moroccan to see reason.  The Moroccan continued on ranting the same thing over and over again.

“You take photo of my grandfather!” “The Koran say you not make picture of people!” “You make picture my grandfather!” “Give me film!”

“You take photo of my grandfather!” “The Koran say you not make picture of people!” “You make picture my grandfather!” “Give me film!”

The little crowd of onlookers were starting to turn into a mob.  Some of the members of the mob started shaking their fists and yelling at us and it wasn’t very long before they started hemming us in and jostling us.  With an increasing sense of urgency, I kept on saying to the Gelfling, “COME ON, LET”S GO!” but he just persisted on trying to convince the Moroccan guy that he hadn’t taken a photograph of his grandfather.  Which was the obvious truth.

The Moroccan guy just kept on ranting his mantra of,

“You take photo of my grandfather!” “The Koran say you not make picture of people!” “You make picture my grandfather!” “Give me film!”

By this time, the mob was about ten people deep all around us and some of them started pushing and jostling us even more.

Then all of a sudden, the Moroccan guy changed his mantra to, “you must pay money!”

“You must pay money!”

“I was only taking a picture of the mountain!”

“You take photo of my grandfather!” “The Koran say you not make picture of people!” “You make picture my grandfather!” “You must pay money!”

“You take photo of my grandfather!” “The Koran say you not make picture of people!” “You make picture my grandfather!” “You must pay money!”

It was at about this time that I noticed that some of the guys in the crowd were starting to pick up large rocks and I’d heard about foreigners being stoned (in the bad way that is) by mobs in Morocco before, so I decided to take the rapidly deteriorating and very dangerous situation into my own hands.

I just grabbed the mewling Gelfling by the scruff of his shirt and shoved him behind me, as I told him to ”SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Then with as much force as I could, I pushed the Moroccan into the rest of the crowd and he fell over backwards onto the ground. I then leant forward and drew a line in the dirt after which I drew my hand across my throat in a slashing motion and said to him, “if you cross the line I’LL KILL YOU!”  I then grabbed a hold of the Gelfling and threw him into the crowd, which knocked about three or four of the guys in the mob out of the way.

The mob instinctively shrank away from us as I continued to shove the Gelfling through the crowd like a battering ram before he could regain his balance. By now, the mob had got the idea that I wasn’t going to be putting up with of any more shit from them and I was quite serious about hurting them.

Hell, I had just roughed up one of one of my own kind, what was I going to do to them?

Amazingly, we just walked away from the situation without a single rock or word being tossed in our direction.

I’ve noticed, more than several times, when I’ve been in the Third World that there seems to be the perception amongst some of the locals that people from countries with Western liberal traditions can be manipulated by their need to do the right thing and to be liked.

Unfortunately, sometimes, it’s useful to get in touch with one’s inner batshit crazy self and channel a little dormant aggression. I guess the question one has to ask oneself in such situations is, do I feel like being a victim today?

As for me,

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes I would, if I could, I surely would
I’d rather be a hammer than a nail
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

Except my interpretation would sound more like this.

If there is one thing that I’ve learnt from my travels, it’s to pay attention to the subconscious messages that my senses send to my brain.  Every time I’ve been really sick with diarrhoea, I can remember the moment that I decided to eat the food that my “spidey sense” tried to tell me was dodgy.  As a matter of fact, when I think about all the times in my life that I have ignored that little voice inside of my head warning me of danger, I’ve ignored myself into some real character building situations.

When I was staying in Tarrazout, the deluded thought crossed my mind that it would be a good idea to try and hook up with some Tauregs and get on one their caravans to Timbuktu.  So I decided to catch a bus from Agadir to Goulimine.  As I was waiting for my bus, I went to get something to eat at one of those suspect roadside stalls.  I can remember looking at the filthy hands (people in that part of the world wipe their backsides with their bare left hands and there is not really enough water around to wash properly) of the food vendor and being repulsed, but I thought “what the heck, I am hungry” and I ate what I was given to me anyway.

The buses in Morocco at that time, were very similar to the school buses used in North America.  Very basic affairs, with no air conditioning or on-board toilets.  The trip from Agadir to Goulimine by bus was a long one and took about 24 hours during which time my bowels reminded me that I should listen to that little voice in my head next time I buy some food.  About eight hours into the trip I got the sensation that I was about to overcome the surly bonds of gravity due to the force of an explosion that was about to happen in my pants.  I was sitting in the back of the bus and as quick as a shot, I flew over the various pieces of luggage, chickens and goats to beg the driver of the bus in my broken French to stop and let me off.

The bus driver wasn’t having any of that and he just waved me away.  I tried conveying my sense of urgency as best as I could but he just wouldn’t listen. 

It wasn’t a merely call of nature I had to answer, it was more like a subpoena from the supreme court of all creation!

I was getting insanely desperate. My shame had already gotten off and I was left with no other option than to start taking my pants down to re-decorate the stairwell with a palette of earthy tones. As soon as I started to undo my pants and pull them down the bus driver just jammed on the brakes, and we skidded to a halt as the doors were flung open.  I ran as fast as I could to behind the back of the bus.

There is nothing to compare with the relief that one has in such situations when the levee breaks and the floodwaters are free to travel their natural course.

As soon as my immediate needs were met, it suddenly occurred to me, that I was out in the open on a flat treeless plain with my pants around my ankles. About 50 yards away was a young shepherd boy with his flock, who just stood there staring at me, as disgusted motorists zoomed past me.  Then, like some cosmic joke, I realised I didn’t have any toilet paper.  You know you’ve reached rock bottom when you’re wiping your backside with a bare left hand full of roadside dust as an audience watches.

To all you mothers out there, I think that I have come into contact with the slightest inkling of what it’s like to have people looking up your clacker as you helplessly convulse, giving birth. 

As the day wore on, we occasionally stopped in small towns, and I was able to get a modicum of relief in some very disgusting Third World latrines.  Night-time seemed to amplify my discomfort as there was no scenery to distract me from thinking about my stomach pains, or by being terrorised by my now spastic peristaltic bowel movements.

Shortly after dawn, we arrived in the fog shrouded town of Tiznit.  I was feeling so exhausted, dehydrated and disorientated that when I stepped off the bus, it was like I had landed on the moon.  I felt so disassociated from everything around me, and it was as though I was seeing everything for the very first time.  In the half hour I was in Tiznit, I took some of the best photographs of ever taken in my life.  Usually when I take a roll of film I only get about one picture per roll that I’d bother keeping.  The half roll of film that I shot that morning, were all keepers.

There have been a few times in my life where bodily discomfort has led me to new heights. 

Another time was when I used to rock climb. I had been to a big and very crazy “cocktail” party. The following morning, with a killer hangover and a few friends, I went climbing.  

There was one climb in particular, a classic called “Eternity“, that I always had a bit of trouble with because it scared me a bit.  It was not uncommon for me to put in up to about 10 pieces of protection (removable devices placed into faults in the rock, to hold the rope as a safety measure) whenever I led (climbed up first trailing the rope below me) Eternity. My friends used to rag on me because it was exhausting for them to take out so much protection on the way up after me. 

On the morning of my hangover, I did the whole climb with only two pieces of protection.  My hangover was so bad that I thought my head was going to explode, and I just wanted to be sick.  I was in so much discomfort as I was climbing, that I didn’t think about the danger that much at all, and it was the best I climbing that I ever did.

The photograph below was taken in 1991 and it is of me at a camp fire with some friends firebreathing.

Ever since I was a little child, I have had a fascination with fire.  I suspect that my love affair with fire started before I was even old enough to talk.  One of my earliest memories is of my grandmother, lighting her wood-burning stove on a cold morning to get breakfast ready.  I can still see the image in my mind of the small flames growing as the kindle caught alight. Magic!

All through my childhood, I used to play with matches, and it was a constant worry to my mother.  One time, when I was about six she caught me early one morning, setting fire to toilet paper and tossing it out my third story window and watching it fall burning to the ground.  What made my mother particularly angry was that my sister was sleeping in the same room, and there was evidence that I had been lighting fires inside of the room as well. Mum was justifiably furious.

That day, when I went to school, my mother gave me an envelope with instructions not to open it and she said that I had to give it to my teacher and that it had to be signed by my teacher and brought back home that afternoon.  When I got to school I handed over the letter as I been told, and it came as quite a surprise to me when the teacher read out a description of what I’d been doing that morning, lighting fires in the bedroom while my sister was still asleep. I’m not sure but I think it was the first time my life that I was ever embarrassed.

My mother has had the school system here in Australia, punish me on other occasions as well.  One time she took me to my headmaster and told him that I had been truant and had him cane me (struck over the open palm with a cane several times).  We used to have corporal punishment in schools, here in Australia, up until the mid-70s.

Near where I used to live (from when I was 6 until about 8 years of age) was a bamboo grove and my friends and I used to make bows and arrows out of the bamboo.  We used to tear off large banana leaves and tuck them into our shorts and pretend we were Africans.  My friends and I used to hunt each other with our bows and arrows in the long grass of a big empty block of land (it was big enough for about 10 or more houses) close by.  

To make the arrows sharper, we used to melt hard plastic and wind it around the shaft tips, while it was still molten to make pointy arrow heads.

One day my sister, a few other friends and I were on the block and getting ready for another day’s safari by melting plastic for arrow heads over a small fire I had made.  One of the neighbours to the block of land saw what we were doing and started yelling at us and chased us off.  Unfortunately, our now untended fire got a bit out of control.  The spreading fire wasn’t that big when the neighbour noticed it spreading.  He ran back into his backyard and got his garden hose and tried to put it out.  The trouble was that the hose wasn’t long enough, the hot wind was blowing and there wasn’t much he could do before the whole block was up in flames. 

By the time the fire brigade turned up a few of the adjoining properties fences were well and truly on fire.  It’s true, criminals do return to the scene of the crime, and our little band stood on the sidewalk nearby, enjoying the show.  We were close enough to hear one of the policeman ask the sooty neighbour how the fire started.  He just pointed at us and said “those little bastards!”  We ran for our lives before anybody could get their hands on us.

Up until my midteens my pyromania was moderately slaked by fireworks.  When I was about six or seven (back in the early 60s), there used to be very large fireworks called “tuppenny bungers” that were like little sticks of dynamite.  Each year there would be stories in the paper how children had blown off fingers playing with tuppeny bungers.

In my childish eyes a tuppenny bunger was a thing of wonder. They were so versatile.  They easily blew up letterboxes, and if you put one in a metal garbage can and then put the lid on it, the resulting explosion would blow the lid over the telephone wires. They were awesome.  I can remember how angry and disappointed I was when the government eventually banned them.  As a kid, I just couldn’t understand it.

By the time I got to the eighth grade in high school, I didn’t need to buy fireworks as I could make my own.  As a matter of fact, I used to hang out with a bunch of guys who are also interested in very similar things. I was particularly interested in rockets, and I used to make little rocket powered cars.  

I used make my primitive homemade rocket engines by mixing my own solid fuel and packaging it into glass pill bottles that had a small hole in the plastic cap.  The little pill bottles were then strapped to a balsa wood car, and then ignited.  With a WHOOOOSH my little cars used to streak down the road.  Now when I look back on what I used to do, it’s amazing, I never had one of those glass pill bottles blow up in my face.

One day I was in the front yard at home, experimenting with my rocket fuel mixture.  I had a small metal plate, that I used to ignite my mixtures on to see how fast they would burn.  I noticed that a mixture that I had concocted made my metal plate extremely hot, and when I poured a little bit more mixture onto it,  it would ignite.  As I experimenting, a friend of mine passed my front yard and I yelled out to him “hey John watch this!” and I poured a small medicine glass of my rocket fuel onto the red hot metal. 

FWOOOP! 

A blinding flash, accompanied by a miniature mushroom cloud was the result. 

My hand was in the mushroom cloud, and as I instinctively pulled it out I saw that all the skin from my wrist to my fingertips was a saggy white bag hanging loosely off my hand and all my fingernails were totally burnt. 

Then the pain came.  To this day, I will ask any woman who says the childbirth is the most painful thing there is, why many women have more than one child.  There is no reason on earth, why I would willingly go through the kind of pain, I experienced on that day, ever again. 

I was kept waiting at the hospital for two hours screaming in agony before I was given a painkiller.  Nothing worked.  I was begging them to just put me to sleep.  Eventually some brainiac figured out that it would be a good idea to stick my hand in some ice cold water (which is the very first thing one should do). 

I had first, second and third degree burns plus I’d burnt my fingernails completely off. I spent three days in hospital, there was talk of cutting off my thumb and it was over a year before I could use my hand properly again.  All the new skin was tight, without wrinkles and I couldn’t close my hand. Because I develop keloid scars I had trouble using my thumb without tearing what little was left of the web between my thumb and index finger.  The trouble with my dexterity was overcome somewhat by plastic surgery performed on my hand about two years later.  The web of my hand was still cracking and splitting 20 years later. My fingernails did eventually grow back.

That year, some of my friends that shared a few of my interests had some pretty horrifying accidents.

Solly Voron opened up a  jar of caesium (which ignites on contact with the air) and it exploded in his face burning his corneas and setting his bedroom on fire. Luckily, Solly got his sight back. 

Alan Ritter, was making some rocket fuel when he blew up and badly burnt his upper arm and elbow.

Bernard Hegg (like all the rest of the group) had made a very powerful and extreamly unstable explosive called nitrogen triiodide. When it is wet it won’t explode, but when it’s dry, all one has to do is blow on it and it will explode. Bernard and I used to take the stuff to school and paint it on door knobs and seats so that it would make small explosions when the items were touched after they dried.  As long as the solution was dry it was safe. Unfortunately for Bernard he made a pill bottle of the compound and put it away in a wardrobe to forget about it. About a year later, he noticed the bottle and picked it up. The slight movement caused the bottle to blow up in his hand and the glass passed straight through his flesh like there was nothing there. He was so lucky not to lose loose his life, never mind the use of his hand. He came out of the experience with scars that were indentical on both sides of his hand.

Finally there was, our guru, Michael Biber (he was one of those guys who had a full beard in the 12th grade) who pretended to be a doctor and went into the local hospital and checked out some radium from one of the x-ray machines and had to be treated for radiation sickness.

So as you can see I’m a bit of a slow learner when it comes to fire. Even though I’ve been badly burnt, I still love being around fires. So much so, that in the summer I barbecue over burning charcoal about once or twice a week and in the colder months about once every two weeks. I actually enjoy the colder months, because I’m able to light up our chiminea. A perfect Sunday morning for me is to sit outside on a cold day with my wife as we read the papers while the chiminea keeps us warm.

Heaven.

My mother sent me the following E-mail as a comment to this post.

When you blew up your hand, I heard you screaming, so I and ran out and you were running around the front yard holding on to your hand. One of the other tenants rang a taxi, but I just ran into the road and flagged one and we went straight to the emergency (The cabbie didn’t even charge me!) I just sat quietly in the cab and held your arm out, away from any contact with anything.

They took you immediately and I filled in the forms. When I was taken to you, you were being wheeled, in a wheelchair with your hand in a bowl of ice water as doctor was asking you what chemicals you had mixed together. As you were telling him, he looked at me and laughingly said, “you’ve got quite a handful haven’t you?….But he will be alright and so will his hand.”

 Poor old mum and the things she had to put up with when I was a kid, and this wasn’t the half of it.

Last night my wife and I went to a dinner at my friend, Mark’s place.

I’ve known Mark for about 15 years and we met each other in an outdoors activity club called SPAN (Sydney Perverts and Nyphos).  Mark is one the  guys that I climbed the Three Sisters, naked with. 

The reason for the dinner was to  test out a few Indian recipes that Mark (who is a chef) and Sonia want to serve at their wedding in November.

One of the interesting things that came out in the conversation at the table was that people who get attacked by animals must be bad people.

I told a story about when I was about 12 and I was attacked by a dog as I walked down an alley. I was just walking along with a friend and, unbeknownst to me, a dog was waiting behind a bush. As I came to the bush near the end of the alley, the dog  jumped out at me unprovoked, and tore a chunk out my shoulder and then ran off. It was a pretty nasty bite and I was disturbed to see a hole about  25mm (about an inch) square with muscle fibre hanging out of my upper arm.

One of the guests (not in the photo) at the table just blurted out, “you must be a bad person!”

Years ago I was closing up a shop that I was the manager of .  I had just opened the front door, to pull down the security grate when a tiny little poodle that had been dyed bright pink tried to savage me.  As I jumped back in surprise, a transvestite sitting on a nearby stoop with his boyfriend hissed out at me, “well you must be a fucked up person!”

P.S.

My mother sent me this comment via E-mail:

“re the Pink Poodle…..if you were a dog, and subject to that sort of crap, you’d be one bitchy little dog too”

I was looking through my old photographs for something that I could put up as a post, when I came across this old photograph of a high school friend of mine called Stephen. 

My family used to move around a lot when I was a kid (no, my family wasn’t in the army), and as a result, I attended six different primary schools and three different high schools.  Because I was in so many different schools I learnt how to make friends and then get over them (when we moved again) quickly. I think this has led to an ability to just move on and start afresh without any nostalgia.

I haven’t stayed in contact with a single person from my school days.  Truth be known, I can hardly even remember more than a handful of names from that time.  It still surprises me when I talk to people nowadays, and they reminisce about “the good old days” at school or when I meet some of their old school friends.  It’s like I’m being told about some strange alien land that I don’t have a visa for and I’ll never be able to visit.  I feel a little envious, but then, I just move on.  That basically sums up the way how I’ve lived a large part of my life. 

Experience, reflect, move on.

Experience, reflect, move on.

Experience, reflect, move on.

Stephen is one of the few people that I remember from high school and in some ways, we shared quite a few things in common.  Stephen’s family had emigrated from England to Australia, and he still had an English accent.  Both Stephen and I were outsiders, who were interested in other things besides, music and sports.

We used to go to auctions together.  One time we went to an animal auction and tried to buy a ferret, because we wanted to go ferreting but we didn’t have enough money to buy one.  Then there was another time that we wanted to buy a hawk so we could try and train it to catch animals.  Luckily for the environment, we didn’t have enough money for that either. 

One funny thing that Stephen used to do at auctions was to buy whatever silver trophies that were on offer.  Stephen’s bedroom was lined with other people’s trophies that have been turned around, so you couldn’t see the engraved names of the actual recipients.  It was almost as though he was trying to create a history of achievement for himself.

Stephen and I also used to like to go skin-diving, and we both got our scuba diving certificates when we were 14 years old.  The fact that we didn’t have any money to buy the equipment didn’t bother us.  We both jumped at the chance when the YMCA in downtown Melbourne offered the course in their swimming pool for a mere $11, and that included one ocean dive with the use of the equipment.

Stephen’s parents were decent down to earth people who always treated me with kindness and respect.  Which at the time, struck me as rather unusual, as most of the other kids I knew, had parents who didn’t seem to take an interest in who their child’s friends were. In the past, I’d been normally greeted with just a grunt and a nod, when I went around to friend’s houses.

Another thing that was different about Stephen’s parents is that they kept a goat so they didn’t have to mow the lawn.  We weren’t living out in the country, we were living in the suburbs.

One day we were in the backyard of Stephen’s place shooting his air rifle at a target with his younger brothers, when his father came home from work.  Steve’s dad was a nice guy and he joined us in shooting at the target.  One at a time, we would fire several shots into the target and then go and see how well we did.  Every time the five of us would walk up to the target to inspect it, the goat would follow us right up to it.  On one occasion when we were looking at the target, one of Stephen’s younger brothers grabbed a hold of his father’s dangling tie, unnoticed, as his dad was checking our results, and stuck the end of it in the goat’s mouth.  As Stephen’s father was bent over, the goat chewed away at his tie and worked his way right up to his throat. 

Suddenly, Stephen’s father felt the weight on his neck and he tried to jump up, but the goat had worked its way right up to the knot in the tie and was still attached.  It made for quite the hilarious scene, as Stephen’s father danced around, trying to stand up and push the goat away from his throat at the same time.  The goat had eaten the tie, fair and square, and wasn’t about to let it go. 

Every time Stephen’s dad tried to push the goat away it would just chomp down harder on the tie and his efforts to free himself, choked him.  The eventual solution was to slap the goat on the side of the head with an open hand to get it to bleat and release an inch of tie at a time.  Slap, bleat, slap, bleat, slap, bleat, until the saliva covered and concertina shaped tie was extracted.  The tie was a mess and there was no way that it could be used as an article of clothing any more.

Unlike how I imagine most people’s parents would have reacted to such an event, Stephen’s father just roared with laughter. 

It was funny.

As the afternoon turned into evening, I was invited to stay for dinner.  Stephen’s family were different to other families who I had dinner with in the past.  Everybody spoke to each other in one big general conversation about whatever subject was being discussed.  Now when I look back, it’s pretty obvious that Stephen’s parents were fairly enlightened and they encouraged their children to interact in an adult way.  I really enjoyed the way how they treated me as an equal, but to be honest, I wasn’t very good at the conversation with adults thing. Not much practice you see.

To everyone’s horror I asked Stephen’s mother, what she did for a living.  There were quick nervous glances around the table, and then Stephen’s mother sort of stiffly raised her hand as though to say, “it’s okay, were all adults here, I can tell him”.

” I work in an artificial insemination facility”

“ A what?” I asked.

“An artificial insemination facility”

I naively blundered on with, “what’s artificial insemination?” I’ve been blessed with an unusually high degree of insensitivity, and I was oblivious to how I was cruelling the conversation.

After another quick intake of breath and nervous glance exchanges between her and her husband, Stephen’s mother swallowed, took a deep breath, and raised her hand again, in what I can only guess was a calming gesture to the rest of the family and answered me with, ” artificial insemination is when you make an animal pregnant using artificial means”

“Oh………. how do you do that?”

More nervous glances, another hand raising.

” We collect the bull semen, and we put it inside of the cows”

“Really!”

” How do you do that?”

Faces were getting redder and the glances more strained.  Without realising it, I was really testing how enlightened these people thought they were.  I bet Stephen’s mother never thought that she’d have to explain such things to a naive idiot over dinner.

Stephen’s mother was made of stern enlightened stuff, so she went on to explain.

“At the facility where I work, we have a fake rear end of the cow made out a fibreglass with a real cow standing next to it ” “We then bring in the bull and when it sees the cow it tries to mount her but we steer it onto the fake fibreglass rear end”

“Really!”

This was all starting to blow my mind. I could never have imagined before that moment, that such things ever happened. My brain was starting to reel.

“Then what happens?” I blurted out as I was still trying to take it all in.

Eyes were starting to roll now, and Stephen and his brothers had their heads bowed down and they were staring at their plates.  Their father, just bowed his head and held it in both hands.

Stephen’s mother then said ” I sit inside of the fake cow’s rear-end and when the ball inserts himself in there I collect his semen into a container.”

“What?!”

“With your bare hands?!”

“No, no, no, I wear long rubber gloves” was the answer and that I nonchalantly received.

Every now and again, I wonder what kind of parent, I would make.  If I was ever to have any children, I’d like to think that I would be as bravely enlightened and forthright as Stephen’s parents.

After Stephen’s mother’s straightforward explanation about her work, conversation just continued as normal. 

No big deal.

When I look back on that dinner I’m in awe at how Stephen’s parents didn’t make a big fuss about something that would seem very strange when taken out of context.  The bare bones of the matter is, that artificial insemination is a day-to-day reality in agriculture, that is performed by people who see it as just a part of their normal everyday working experience. 

When one thinks about it, we make a big deal about a lot of stupid little stuff in our society. 

Having said all of that, I don’t think I’d be too comfortable telling people that I had such a job.

Apologies in advance to all those people out there who are heartily sick of that overly long dog and pony show that is going on in the States at the moment.

I usually don’t like expressing political opinions, because it’s like the kiss of death to a politician, if I like them.  For years, I voted against John Howard and the little creep kept on getting voted back in by the majority of the electorate.  I also voted “yes” in the referendum as to whether or not Australia should become a republic, when the majority of Australians voted in favour of the monarchy.  In short, I’m out of step with the majority of Australian opinion.

This fact was driven home to me one time when I was arguing with a neighbour, about something that I can’t even remember now, and she said something that I thought was really stupid. In my normally non-confrontational, measured, thoughtful and diplomatic way (not), I blurted out to her, “you’re so stupid, I bet you voted against the republic and you voted for John Howard”.

To which she retorted as quick as a whip, “of course I did!”

I then remarked that she was the only person I knew, who would admit publicly that she did. 

Her response was, “I don’t know anyone who didn’t vote that way”.

That’s when it hit me how polarised the society I live in is.  My neighbour lived in a world that was pro-monarchy, and right wing economic rationalism.  Whereas I inhabit a world that is populated with pro-republic left-leaning liberals. 

I must be careful what I use the word “liberal” here in Australia because the “Liberal Party” is the name of the political party here in Australia that more closely resembles the Tory party in England and the Republican Party in the USA.  Let me state, right here and now, I am not, and never will be a supporter of the Liberal party, here in Australia.

I’ve been interested in Barack Obama for some time now, and to be honest I didn’t think he had a hope a hope in hell of winning the Democratic party nomination.  I lost interest in Hillary Clinton, when I read this very interesting blog entry about her business interests and connections.

I think it’s very ironic that the Democratic party, that used to be pro-slavery, has nominated the first African American to run for the American presidency.  Personally, I couldn’t give a damn about Obama’s skin colour (after all, I used to have recurring dreams as a small child of being the first black Pope.  But that’s a story for another time).  What does interest me about him is his upbringing and the fact that he spent some time at school in Indonesia.

I think that Obama’s Indonesian connection is very important to America’s future for two reasons.

The first reason is because Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Moslems.  The Islam as practised by the Indonesians is much more moderate than that of the Saudi Wahhabis that the western media like to portray as the face of Islam.  I think it is extremely important for not only America, but the rest of the world, that America engages with this more moderate form of Islam instead of using Moslems as a bogeyman to scare their population into line.

The second reason why I think Obama’s Indonesian upbringing is important to America, is because I’m fairly certain that he’d be familiar with the Indonesian notion of consensus (mufacat).  Traditionally, Indonesians have always tried to find a middle ground, and therefore compromise, rather than polarising opinion.  The polarisation of the American political scene (just like here in Australia) is so counterproductive. 

I think the world needs to find another way, other than, “if yer ain’t with us, then yer agin us”.  Such false logic is the tool of demagogues.

The trouble with a polarised society, is that neither camp knows or is interested in what the other camp is doing.  Each side has its own press, complete with its own propagandists, preachers and demagogues.  There just doesn’t seem to be a crossover of ideas, which leads to a hardening and intransigence of opinion.  It would seem that the world has forgotten about Socratic dialogue, and how to find out about the truth by talking to each other and testing each other’s ideas in a civilised fashion.

People with a polarised mindset, have a very difficult time in exchanging ideas.  Bailed up behind a wall of dogma, such people aren’t open to reason or persuasion. I often like to quote Carl von Clausewitz from his book, “On War” that, “war is merely the continuation of politics by other means”.

I’ve always taken that to mean that war is the natural outcome of the failure of diplomacy.

When people don’t respond to words and negotiation, what’s left but force?

I just have a gut feeling that Obama is a man who tries to find what people have in common rather than use their differences as a wedge. 

The American philosopher William James (1842 – 1910) once said, ” real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and distains – under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core”.

But who cares about my opinion anyway?  I won’t be voting in that election and if I did, it would be the kiss of death to Mr Obama’s presidential aspirations.

Back in 1990 when I was working as a photographic assistant in a very big studio, I was invited to a fancy dress party by the woman who used to handle all the props in our shoots.  It was a really great party, and most people came in fantastic costumes. 

Back in those days, I used to go picking magic mushrooms so I went to the party with my contribution of a mushroom dip.  I told the hostess of the party what was in the dip and she just put it out on the table for everybody to help themselves.

Well, I guess that I don’t have to tell you that it was quite the party.  My girlfriend (at the time) and I, went as hippies (strangely enough) and we spent most of the night standing out in the backyard socialising. 

Also in the backyard was a young blonde woman dressed up like a cave woman (in a white fake fur bikini) accompanied by a much older man dressed up as a caveman (ala Fred Flintstones) and sporting a long, curly blond wig, and carrying a fake dinosaur bone in his hand as a club. Standing on their own, because no one was a game enough to go near them, were two huge (over six foot)  scary looking guys (the ones in the photograph below).  They both had the physiques of bodybuilders and the biggest scariest guy had a mohawk and was wearing jeans, no shirt and a cow skin vest.  He looked like he was from another age when farmers used to go Viking after they had planted their crops.

In my altered state of consciousness, I thought it would be a good idea to try and get these guys into the swing of things so I went up to the biggest scariest guy and said to him, “gees mate! I hope that’s a costume, and you can take it off later on. You don’t go around looking like that all the time do you?” 

Both of them just snorted and then smiled at me as I stuck out my hand to shake theirs. They were so bored that they were glad to have somebody who wasn’t too scared to talk to them.  It wasn’t long before I found out they were from Finland and their names were Ricky and Richard.  I also found out that their favourite type of holiday was to go from Finland to Sweden and pick fights with Swedes and beat the shit out of them, and that their favorite movie was The adventures of Ford Fairlane

Ricky cracked himself up when he did his impression of Ford Fairlane.

“Clint Eastwood?”

“Do I know heem?”

“Ya, I fokked heem!”

As other guests at the party realised that Ricky and Richard weren’t going to kill anyone, a few of them came over to join in the conversation.  The young cave woman also came over without the guy she came to the party with. 

Within about five minutes it was obvious to the five or six people in the conversational group that the cave woman was interested in Richard (the guy with the glasses).  Richard wasn’t backwards about being forward, and he said to the cave woman “zo you like me eh?” To which the cave woman smiled and blushed a little and she pointedly glanced over to her date.  Richard just said ” don vorry about him, we go fokk in zee tent over dare”. 

Surprisingly, considering the other people witnessing what was going on, the cave woman said ”no I can’t, he’ll get angry with me”, as she motioned with her head towards the older caveman. 

The caveman was no dummy. 

He knew what was going on, but he didn’t come within the conversational circle but, instead, he called to the cave woman that he wanted to go.  The cave woman called back that she wanted to stay and that he should go home without her.  To which the caveman pulled off his long curly blond wig, uncovering the grey balding pate of a man in his 60s, and threw it on the ground. The old caveman then proceeded to bang his bone (the fake plastic dinosaur one that is) on the side of the house, while pleading with the cave woman to leave with him. 

Talk about a great visual metaphor. 

The cave woman very casually turned around and said “no, no, it’s okay, you go home I want to stay.” Poor old Fred Flintstone just dropped his shoulders and bone, turned around dejectedly and made his exit.  The old lion had been cast out of the pride. 

No sooner had the old suitor left when Richard restarted his none too subtle overtures by grabbing for the cave woman’s breast in front of all of us.  The cave woman stepped out of his reach, and just smiled at him.  Richard countered “maybe you vould like it if we both fokked you?”  Ricky who had hadn’t said very much all night, just smirked.  The cave woman smiled, whilst the rest of us just didn’t know where to look. 

Richard then lunged for the cave woman’s breasts again, and once again, the woman retreated.  I then said to Richard, “look, mate, you’ve got it made, but you’re going to fuck it up.”

“Vott do you mean?”

“I mean that women don’t like to be treated like that”

“Vott do you mean?”

“Be nicer, show a little love”. 

Richard tilted back his head as he pondered that little chestnut, and then he turned to me and looked me square in the eye and said in a booming baritone voice laced with menace,

“FOKK LOV!”

Then he lunged at the cave woman’s breast again, and once again, the cave woman deftly dodged his grope.  I guess it was getting a little bit too real for the cave woman because she just turned around and walked out of the party. 

Yep Richard blew it.

Ricky wasn’t grinning any more.

Ricky didn’t say very much for the rest of the evening and consoled himself by eating most of the mushroom dip, and as a consequence, he was quite mellow by the time dawn came around.

I must have given some kind of contact details to Richard and Ricky, because a couple of months later, they turned up at the studio.  It seems that Richard and Ricky had gone up north, and had been travelling all around Queensland, during which time they won the full-contact karate championship in both their weight classes.  Which is saying something, because Queensland is full of hard men who like nothing else than a brawl.

We had been doing some high key photography in the studio and the lighting set up was still there.  So I asked the guys, if I could take some quick photographs of them.  I took mainly head shots of them, but they wanted me to take a few shots of them posing the way they wanted to (one of the shots is the picture above). 

I could see that Richard and Ricky were impressed with where I was working.  I could almost hear the gears of their minds, as I watched them try to figure out a way to insinuate themselves into such a scene.  I made it clear to them that the was no way that they could get a job working in the studio without an education in photography.  It just wasn’t going to happen.

Richard then asked me if he and Ricky could crash at my place for a little while.  I told them I’d have to check with my girlfriend, so I rang her up.

Her answer,

“NO FUCKING WAY!”

To tell the truth I was glad that I had an out.  I’ve met people like Richard and Ricky before, when I used to work in the carnival, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to control them.  I’m pretty sure they had me sized up well enough to know the truth of the situation as well. If push came to shove, there was no way I could resist them.  My girlfriend knew that and she saved me from them.

Every now and again I meet hard cases, like Richard and Ricky, who seem to be lost in this modern age.  It was almost as though two Vikings from a thousand years ago, had somehow fallen through a rift in space and time to the other side of the world. Brisbane in the early 1990s.

I don’t think the modern civilised world needs such pure expressions of testosterone like Richard and Ricky any more.  They were out of place and out of time.

As a matter of fact, I think the whole warrior ideal needs to be deleted from our culture.  Popular entertainment, likes to show the warrior as a noble hero that saves the day.  Truth be known though, warriors are the ones that we need to be saved from.

I was reading a post on Pomeroy’s blog about “no standing” signs and it reminded me of this picture I took of my friend Stefan years ago when I was living in Brisbane.