Sometimes, the smallest things can have a huge impact on your life. Some things stay with you for ever.

 

As an example, two innocent conversations I had as a child continue to shape my toilet habits up until this day.

 

Innocent toilet conversation #1

 

When I was quite young, my brother and I stayed with a family friend for a few days. I don't really know why, but I seem to remember it being the first time I'd ever been out of my house for any length of time.

My main problem was, at that time in my life,  the idea of going "number two" at another person's house filled my with unassailable dread.

But I was prepared! I had rejected food in the lead up to my stay, and continued to eat like a sparrow or supermodel for the duration, all in the interest of keeping my buttocks clenched for two days.

But my host would have none of that. I have no idea how the topic came up - and am rather worried about how it could have - but I clearly remember her worried cry of "if you hold it in you'll get sores on your bottom!"

From that moment on, I would rush off to do the business at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, I retained my fear of out-of-house use of the outhouse. The result? A lot of sprints home. So many days of school were wasted as I contemplated the formation of sores, which in my mind could grow to the size of small planets.

 

Innocent toilet conversation #2

 

My primary school music teacher was, frankly, insane.

 

In Broken Hill you tend to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to cinema - movies are screened months after they are shown in metropolitan areas.

I once arrived in music class to find the teacher, freshly returned from a trip to Adelaide, ready to make a speech.

"When I was away I went and saw Jurassic Park," she said. Keep in mind that - a the time - every child in the school had spent months awaiting this movie. Dinosaurs? Awesome.

"At one point a little boy climbs a fence and gets electrocuted, but I want you to know that he's alright in the end."

She told us this, she said, so that we wouldn't be too scared. A sea of young faces stared blankly as they realised this insane woman - who incidently never ever let me play the drum - had ruined what appeared to be a critical point in the movie.

On a separate occasion, one of the students asked if they could go to the toilet.

"Yes! Of course! Go right now," she exclaimed - hence the exclamation points.

She went on to explain to the class that if you didn't urinate right away your bladder would explode, causing toxic waste to flood throughout your bloodstream and kill you within minutes. She did not specify a timeframe.

This affected me deeply.

"Can I please go to the toilet?" I would ask teachers. If they said no I would enter a deep depression, fully convinced that I had been callously handed a death sentence.

I know what genocide feels like - like having one to many Cokes.

 

Years later, a friend and I got into a debate with our Year 12 English teacher over whether sentences that ended in exclamation points indicated that the reader should shout. Although she made a compelling argument as to why this wasn't always necessary, we continued to shout throughout the class's read-through of the Color Purple. This exercise took months, mainly because the loud voices lead to constant interruptions by passing teachers who wanted to make sure everything was alright.

 

Strangely enough, the huge number of formulae I committed to memory in both mathematics and physics class have all slipped away into the mists of time. Play me a song I last heard in Year 9, however, and I'll sing you the chorus.

 

Some things stick. Some don't.

 

 

 

I never seem to get masculine injuries.

I've never 'pulled a hammy' kicking the winning goal. I don't have an awesome scar received in a bar fight. I've never sported a cast after breaking my arm diffusing a bomb that was about to destroy Metropolis.

Those are the type of injuries that can be worn as a badge of honor. A cast full of names and pictures, scribbled on by the adoring public that visit your bedside as you recuperate from a severe case as awesomeness.

 

No, for me its always those embarrassing injuries. Take today for example - I have a sore elbow. Why? Well yesterday I helped my brother dig a number of ditches in preparation of his bathroom renovations.

On the surface it certainly sounds manly. Injury sustained through hard, manual labor? Helping a mate and brother in the blazing heat? Blood, sweat and tears? Alas, no.

See, the reason my arm hurts is because, over our 20 minute lunch break, we threw rocks at an old bath.

 

I hurt my arm throwing rocks.

 

I didn't actually get any to land in the bath.

 

Thus goes the story of my life. A childhood fraught with embarrassing injuries.

 

Embarrassing injury #1: Breaking my foot at the ATM.

 

When I say foot, I mean little toe. See where this is heading?

I went to the ATM late one night and, after checking my balance, fell down the stairs, smashing my foot as I ungracefully fell to the pavement. I lay there for a full minute before limping back to the car.

The next morning my foot was the size of my ego, so I went to the hospital. I didn't get a cast (masculine), I got crutches (not).

Two weeks I hobbled around in my bandage. I still have a calcified lump there that hurts when it gets cold.

The worst part of the whole thing? I didn't have any money in my account. The trip was a complete waste of time. Awesome.

 

Embarrassing injury #2: I burnt my elbow on the kettle.

 

Doing the dishes one night as a child, I was drying a plate when I held my left elbow over the steam emanating from a nearby boiling kettle. The result was a pus-filled burn roughly the size of a frizbee.

 

Embarrassing injury #2.5: Breaking the burn.

 

Days later, my mother took me, my brother and a friend to the pool. I was running along some hot concrete, interestingly enough with the words "No Running" painted beneath my excited little feet, when I slipped and fell.

I scraped my gigantic, pus-filled burn across the ground, ripping the tender skin. This resulted in, well, pus, but also 10cm strands of skin dangling from the area. Mum took us home, complaining that she hadn't been able to finish her laps.

Around the same time, My twin brother cut his chin after a mis-timed bomb jump into the pool. That's damn masculine, he even got a cool scar and stitches. Much cooler than scraping your kettle burn.

 

Embarrassing injury #3: Jumping off a cliff.

 

Sure, jumping off a cliff sounds cool. Unfortunately I did it because we were planning the stunts for the Predator 2 movie we were going to make, and the cliff was about a metre high.

This was after we abandoned our Nightmare on Elm Street project, as we were uncomfortable with the thought of someone walking around with knives on their fingers.

This was the first time I broke my foot, as I landed quite awkwardly. I was cruelly denied a cast as mum didn't believe it was broken and by the time I went to the doctor the injury had healed.

Instead of becoming the centre of attention that people in casts always are - people flock to sign your pain - a game developed where people would yell insults at me so I would chase them, take two steps and crumple to the ground in pain.

The salt in the wound is that we later discovered there was already a Predator 2 movie, involving stunts much more impressive then a skinny boy with glasses and a "Skate or Die" singlet jumping off a small cliff.

 

Other embarrassing injuries: Burning my wrist on a test tube. Spraining my ankle after catching it under a see-saw. Scraping my hands on a pile of bricks I was trying to jump onto 'ninja style'. Breaking a tooth on a vodka bottle while swimming. Stomach problems after eating a kilogram of Milo for dinner. Developing a migrane after eating two packets of jelly crystals for dinner. Burning my fingers after grabbing a heated glass rod. Bruising my face after colliding with a team member on the Sandball court. Bruising my face after running into a sliding glass door. Numerous paper cuts - the most inglorious of all injuries.

 

The injuries still continue. Recently I slipped and fell quite heavily after unwittingly flooding a room while trying to clean a fishtank.

 

In the near future Eileen and I are going to begin renovations on our new house. Surely a masculine injury awaits. Pass me the drill.

 

One last point; People waste a lot of time debating whether certain people are gay or not. Take the above blog for example. A man whining about idiotic injuries would probably be gay, no? Surely straight guys never actually use the word masculine. Well that's where your wrong. The real indicator of sexuality you should be looking for is whether or not the blog contains the word "awesome". In this case I, without thinking, used the word awesome about six times. This means I am straight. Try it yourself. Always works. It's awesome.

 

Broken Hill can be an odd place. For a start, most of the thing is over a mine.

 

When I was a kid I used to make forts out of mattresses. I would sit inside and believe myself nigh invulnerable. The fantasy would always come to an end, however, when my neighbor - who weighed about 74 grams - would lightly sit on the top, sending the whole thing crashing down.

 

It's a testament to mankind that the city I call home is not in a similar situation. Most evenings at around 7pm they let off dynamite underground, and half the city shakes for a few seconds.

If I was watching a summer blockbuster about an alien invasion and the plot involved setting off explosions below your nan's house, I'm betting you'd cry foul. "Wouldn't the ground collapse?" You'd say, and I'd be sitting there with an introspective look on my face. "They've done their research," I'd say, nodding sagely. We'd then have a long argument over who would win, the aliens or Darth Vadar, and then end up wasting half the night wondering whether the Borg could assimilate the Sith.

 

Sci Fi tangent #1: I think it would depend on whether lightsabers could cut through the Borg's adaptive shielding, and whether the individual Force user's ability extended to the manipulation of individual nanobots.

 

Sci Fi tangent #2: I'd also wonder what kind of bloody awful movie we were watching. Cinema has already taught us that alien invasions can be stopped simply by closing a cupboard door. On a related note, why would aliens who are killed by contact with water invade earth? Bad choice. Now this is true sci fi, quibbling over details that no-one cares about. Han shot first.

 

To many people who live their lives here in The Silver City, only three locations exist within the universe: Broken Hill, Tadlaide, or Away.

It's quite a robust system, allowing all people to be swiftly classified as one of three things: A local (people you welcome into your home), an extended family member (as almost all people living in 'Tadlaide - Adelaide to the uninitiated - either moved there from Broken Hill or are related to someone there) or those From Away (he is 'From Away' they say as they stare at them in the supermarket).

 

I've always been a bit skeptical of the system. The first two locations are quite intuitive, but the Away label is troubling, as it can be applied just as accurately to someone from Sydney as it can be to an Alaskan seal fisherman.

Although I've tried to think of a better way, there really isn't anything that captures the Broken Hill mindset so eloquently.

 

I've never felt particularly isolated in this place. That probably has a lot to do with the current age. By the time I was old enough to give a toss, this whole internet shebang was in full swing.

Back when Broken Hill raised the curtain though, people were too concerned about being crushed by a giant rock a kilometre underground to hunt for Transformers the Movie script spoilers.

 

Sci Fi Tangent #3: I found them, it's gonna suck.

 

Another quirk of the city is its tendency to refer to people by their 'grading.

To elaborate, to the best of my understanding:

 

An A Grader is someone born in Broken Hill;

 

A B Grader is someone not born here, but has lived here for quite some time, preferably marrying an A Grader and having children;

 

A C Grader is a 'blow in', they've moved From Away, haven't been here very long and aren't even the secretary of the Lion Club or anything.

 

I believe it goes down from there, but my knowledge is spotty. I think there's also a special A+ Grader category, wherein you were born Locally to Local parents and your nan lives in the same dynamite-laden street.

 

People of a different nationality can have trouble claiming A Grade status to some of the older, crustier locals, regardless of parentage.

 

Engagement in the community - such as adopting the local and its many patrons - and occasionally move you up a grade after a decade or so.

 

Extraordinary engagement can bump you up immediately. This is why there is always a Secretary of the Lions Club.

 

 

 

 

If you drop a Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, it explodes.

Enlightened by a legion of idiotic YouTubers, we recently discovered this to be true. Although if you don't mash it up first, it's quite a dull experience.

So now there's a two litre bottle of Diet Coke sitting in our backyard. It's been there for weeks at this point, but I'm too scared to pick it up lest I end up in one of those cautionary videos they show to 7-year-olds.

"Stefan Delatovic had the world at his feet - a blog read by four people, a job, a home, a family, even the ability to see almost clearly in direct sunlight - until that fateful day!" Cue hollywoodesque explosion, footage of me in traction. "If YouTube jumped off a bridge would I? Not any more! And neither should yoooooou!"

Could be worse though, I could have chosen to emulate some of that Funniest Home Videos stuff - that shit'll kill you.

On the other hand, emulating the 'shocking' behavior of our boys in Iraq would leave me quite safe, but looking like a colossal dickhead.

 

Some things just are not meant to co-exist. Mentos and Diet Coke, soldiers and video phones, John Howard and me. Ah, biting political commentary, goes down smooth.

 

I have had to face up to a similar situation of late: My guitar and my broadband, never the twain shall meet.

 

Traditionally, a child finishes their schooling and blossoms out into the world, leaving behind the suddenly cramped confines of the family home. In my somewhat embarrassing case, the opposite occurred. Within a year of finishing school my entire family had buggered off - except for my father of course, who'd fled years ago.

So it was me, an old acoustic guitar and a box of my brother's comics that I wasn't allowed to open.

After spending the best part of a week opening the box of comics and then meticulously sealing it up again, I decided to have a crack at the guitar.

At first, learning guitar is incredibly boring. All you can really do is play the same four chords for eight weeks.

Luckily, in your ninth week you can release an album of contemporary pop.

 

I recently went back to the kindergarten I had attended, and was amazed at the minuscule proportions of the toilets. Was my ass really that small once upon a time?

As it is so with dial-up internet. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly normal amount of time to wait for a webpage to load. Looking back, I wondered how I ever managed to take a crap in something that small.

 

The advantage? A night of surfing the internet would involve about two hours of waiting, which I would use to strum those four chords.

Slow internet taught me guitar.

 

But alas! Broadband was invented, and suddenly those impromptu practice session vanished up the phone line.

 

I wrote that last sentence and then I went out to lunch, now my momentum is gone. The point is I forgot how to play guitar or something.

 

Oh yeah! Playing guitar or having great internet. I can't have both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is often said that we shouldn't try to change the ones we love.

 

For generations, mothers have sat down their daughters and told them that 'changing a man' is an uphill battle, and informed them of the benefits of buying a large shed so you can get your reading done in peace.

Some things - such as the clothes he wears and the food he eats - can be altered slightly. Some things - such as an addiction to gambling or pornography - tend to be set in stone. Fact of life. If you met him playing the pokies and his pick up line was "life's kickin' when your knickers are stickin'", walk away. Run even.

 

Sidenote: The above quote, "life's kickin', etc.,", is something I actually saw on a bumber sticker someone had proudly placed across the back of their giant ute. It's easily the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I often wonder what the owner of this vehicle says when they drive up to visit their mother, and what sort of person would be impressed by it. If I met this person, would my mind explode? This will plague me for quite some time.

 

So, changing of loved ones is a no-no, but what about people we don't love? What about people we hate? Can we change them? Will they change themselves?

 

As this is such a Sex and The Cityesque topic up until now, allow me to rephrase that...

 

I couldn't help but wonder ... can we change the ones we hate? Are we sluts? [Insert pun here] Cunt. Men are bastards.

 

Anyway, This train of though took off from the following station; My attendance at the local football league's annual awards ceremony. I was required to attend for work. The 20 minutes I spent there were easily the least comfortable 20 minutes of my life thus far. Exaggeration? Yes, but it paints a picture.

 

There are few things that mark me as Australian. As the saying goes 'football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars'.

Unfortunately I won't touch a pie, or tomato sauce - I have left many a canteen lady shocked into worried silence - cars hold no interest for me and one thing I despise above all others is the sport of football.

Kangaroos? Indifferent. Seem nice, could kill me.

 

I have never been a sportsman, it just never interested me. The problem was that growing up, I sported both ridiculously long hair and humorously thick glasses - allowing me to attract the twin insults of 'girl' and 'nerd' on a regular basis.

 

Sidnote: This persisted until I was 16. I cut my hair and got smaller glasses and people started talking to me. I realised this was quite a shallow situation but, overwhelmed, made the conscious decision that I didn't care.

 

Given the above facts, it is safe to say that footballers were not my friends. In fact, emboldered by their prowess and popularity, they were the loudest of my attackers.

 

Sidenote: Yes, I realise this is all very self-indulgent. What else are blogs for? I'm am at work and I don't want to work. What else can I do?

 

Strangely, no matter what these sporting elite subjected me to, it never seemed to truly get under my skin. Why? Because I felt on some level that I was better.

Through teenage years, yelling, screaming, cursing and generally being a crass, idiotic dickhead seem downright impressive. But I knew that, one day when we all went out into the real world, my ability to read, write and reason would far outway their ability to be a fuckwit. Surely their behavior, at the time applauded by their legion of ham-encrusted mates, would be looked down upon later in life.

 

That's the problem with all this, you see, as I was absolutely wrong.

 

Sitting at the annual football medal presentation, I was struck with how, well, high school it all was.

 

One point of the evening involved calling out the names of players who had excelled for one reason or another. As the names were called, tables would erupt with fists pounding on wood, whoops, hollers and loud proclimations that the man had succeeded because of his giant penis, tiny penis, homosexuality, femininity, stupidity or what have you.

 

What really struck me though, was that the people presiding over this event were cheering on this behavior, laughing at the jokes, clapping at the hilarious pranks and generally getting into the hoodlum spirit.

 

I wanted to write this to warn future generations. Don't be fooled into thinking that the idiots you meet will be penalised for the things they do.

Be aware of something I wasn't. Every weekend they're going to a club full of people who are doing the same things. Older generations are encouraging and applauding this behavior.

 

So that's the point I suppose. You can't change people whether you love them or hate them. People change themselves.

 

If you get a round of applause for drinking a litre of vodka and smashing a glass onto your face, you'll keep doing it.

 

In our paper today we ran a story about a brothel that will now offer customers a discount on fuel.

While explaining the new initiative, the owner said she wanted to "think outside the box".

Think about it.

 

 

Happy birthday to me.

 

 

The price of a sausage roll is entirely dependant on its velocity.

 

Allow me to explain; A home made sausage roll purchased in the sleepy outback town of Broken Hill will set you back about $3. In the fast-paced metropolitan environs of Sydney a sausage roll will cost about $4.50, no doubt to accomodate the cost of having it home-made in Zimbabwaue about 14 months prior.

That same sausage roll, purchased on the Indian Pacific as it winds its way across the country, will have a price of roughly $14,000.

By similar method, the Broken Hill product will be pleasant, the Sydney product will be an 'acquired taste' and the train-based snack will leave you running for a toilet that folds out of the wall.

 

Kept in mind, this simple formula can be of great use to us all, whether you're working (slowly, quickly, or where's the fucking power point?) or sleeping (comfortably, briefly or wedged between nursing mothers).

 

While this is all a bit of harmless fun, the same can be applied to meat pies, and then you're in a fatal no-man's-land of ground up testicles.

... he's got radioactive blood!!


Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70_TD> Hulk 70_TD> Green Lantern 65_TD> Catwoman 55_TD> The Flash 50_TD> Wonder Woman 50_TD> Superman 50_TD> Iron Man 40_TD> Batman 40_TD> Supergirl 40_TD> Robin 35_TD>

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz



It's pretty obvious really. Spidey is awesome. So am I.

Love the old school pic by the way, with the webbed up armpits.

X-Men: The Last Stand. A Review. Spoilers abound.

Shiny. This was the biggest, funnest movie I've seen in a long time. The action and set pieces were amazing. The effects were impressive, albeit with a few missteps.
This was also the first movie in the franchise that made me believe in a world full of mutants. Beast's role in government, the long lines of mutants and protestors and Magneto's army all showed that these people were a full-blown part of society instead of a student body holed out up in Westchester.

Despite my glee as I sat in the cinema, it only took me a few minutes after the credits rolled to realise that under the shiny surface, this movie is as empty as Charlie's wheelchair.

Now, if you're the sort of fanboy who can't stand it when a movie diverges from its source material - wait for DVD. Strangely, that didn't really bother me. I don't have a problem seeing these characters stand alone. Frankly, the prospect of a new X-Men movie spinning wildly away from the comic timeline has me pumped.

What did bother me though is that the movie messed up the characterisation as established in the last two films. Xavier's 'I don't have to explain myself ... especially to you' line completely missed the mark. The comics have dealt with the Prof's dark side, but the movies have kept him too clean for that line to work.
And Magneto's 'What have I done?' towards the end, complete with 'I'm human now' hair, just seemed too pathetic for the Master of Magnetism, even in the face of his ultimate defeat. Throwing away Mystique went the other way. Despite his villain status, Erik's always had an air of honor about him.

Despite the obvious killing spree, Wolverine has lost his teeth. Even though Movie Wolverine has more of the 'kind hearted uncle' about him than the comic version, this film veered too far. Inspirational speeches about togetherness don't sit with him at all.

Storm was surprisingly bearable.

The concept of a mutant cure is an interesting one that opens up a lot of great storytelling possibilities. I would have liked to have seen much more about mutants and humans struggling with the ethics of it all. Unfortunately the humans turn it into a weapon almost instantly and become mustache-twirling villains. They might as well just scream 'The mutants are right!'.

When you're making a comic movie, you can pretty much change anything as long as you keep the spirit of the work intact. For example, no-one cares that Mary-Jane came before Gwen Stacey, because Peter Parker was spot on. I think that, in general, the spirit was fine in this one. It's just the plot and dialogue that let it down.

Despite what I said earlier, it is a shame that we'll never be able to see movies based on some great X-Men stories. There were a lot of great storylines that were cannabalised to make one great scene in this one. Days of Future Past could've been a whole film. Sentinels should be a whole film, but'll feel a little hollow when we've already seen 'em.
Most of all; The Phoenix saga. Was cool in the movie, but it's a shame to see an epic tale of love and sacrifice reduced to a zombie bitch rampage.

To reiterate, I enjoyed the film, and i'll be watching it again. I won't be thinking a lot, but it's an enjoyable ride. B-

Some random thoughts:
1. Some great uses of powers, which is what I'm always looking for: Colossus sharing his powers with Rogue; Iceman's 'true form' at last; flying flaming car grenades!; Storm's whirlwind punch; the Kitty/Juggernaut chase; Fastball special; Madrox.

2. Beast in full flight was a sight to behold. Great casting as well.

3. Wolverine killed a LOT of people. Sweet.

4. This movie rivals Narnia for highest Body Count Without a Drop of Blood Spilled.

5. Calisto has super speed?

6. I liked that this movie effectively featured a new X-team. A revolving roster could be cool in the future.

7. I'm the Juggernaut bitch!

8. If you aren't aware of the comics, wouldn't you asking yourself this question: Why would a destructive, alternate personality call itself 'The Phoenix'? They stripped out the rebirth theme, so what the hell? She doesn't usually have a codename at all!

9. Jeez, sucks to be Scott. Not only does he die off-screen, no-one even pays attention till the end. In the meantime, Xavier dies onscreen, gets tears AND a funeral! Poor four-eyed bastard.

10. Mutant cure made from mutant. It's like 10,000 spoons.

11. I don't really understand why the X-Men decide to take such extreme action. The cure's voluntary. Only villains are being shot with it. I agree this is abhorrent, and they should work to get rid of the cure altogether, but isn't stripping out a dude's powers better than stabbing them repeatedly with big claws?

12. 'that's why the pawns go first'. Too evil.

13. Magneto pays out Wolverine for 'never learning' at the end. At that point, Wolvie's killed like 100 people while Magneto just hung around.

14. Whatever effect they used to de-age Charles and Erik was sweet.

Wow. I talk a lot. And I'm a nerd.

Haven't blogged in a while. So I did!!

weeeee

thebeacon.co.nr


We're watching you.....