Angel Fish with temporary Neon Tetras

It was not a choice the old man wanted to make, but the child stayed at school and met his obligations to complete another deskbound year indoors.  The old man knew that the aquarium had to be purchased and he and the young boy made the arduous trek to FiveDock and acquired through the exchange of money and knowing looks, one 75 litre tank, light, filter, heater, flat box stand, some water plants and two or three plastic bags of washed quartz gravel.

He loaded the burden in the back of his old Subaru cart and set off some five kilometres to his house on the road that bordered the golf course.  The man was poor and could only afford to live on the side of the road that did not back onto the links.

He set the tank in the corner of the old man’s family room.  It was filled with surprisingly alkaline tap water.  The old man added water ager to remove the chlorine he knew would be toxic to the fish – peeling off their slime coats and allowing the dreaded fin rot to take hold.  He added a few caps-full of cloudy liquid alleged by the aquarium keeper to contain the bacteria necessary to turn fish waste nitrites into plant food nitrates.

The old man balanced the pH, sat down heavily in his Jason Recliner, carefully unscrewed the top from a stubbie of Boag’s Light beer and surveyed his handiwork with some small amount of pride.

They would wait a week for the tank to settle down, the plants to adjust to their new environment and they would take the time to survey the catalogue of tropical fish exotica to satisfy the boy’s insatiable and transient thirst for the novel.

The old man had been here before in his own youth.  He knew the mysteries of domestic recreational aquaculture and he felt in the pit of his stomach the anticipated dread of sharing his family room with the life and death struggle about to overtake their lives.  The boy scanned the catalogue and selected his fish.  The old man fingered where his beard had been and began to plan his escape.

The boy wanted more fish than could fit in the confines of 75 litres, less room for gravel, plants, the heater and a late purchase of a Halong Bay style polymer rock intended to offer sanctuary for the weaker fish who were about to dance the dance of the liquid jungle.  Death in the afternoon.

The old man encouraged the boy to consider smaller fish with bright colours, to allow them to school in the confines of the tank.  The boy insisted on variety of shape and form.  Across the old man’s weather beaten face flickered a look of knowing apprehension.

They agreed that a couple of Bronze Catfish would provide the colony with a useful garbage collection service.  The boy compromised on small schools of Neon Tetras and, Zebra Danios.  The old man allowed a few Swords and a pair of Gouramis.  The boy agreed to a few Mollies and Guppies.

The fish were introduced into the tank in the time-honoured way of floating the sealed plastic bags in the water to allow the temperatures to equilibrate and then the tank and bag waters were allowed to mix slowly so that the fish would not be shocked.  The boy knew that the old man was wise in the ways of home aquaria since the days of his own youth.

For a moment the boy gazed as the fish began to explore the reaches of the tank, but soon he was distracted and turned his attention to the Nintendo game paying itself on the large screen LCD.  That was his last engagement with the aquatic domain.

The old man grew weary of the boy’s indifference to the demands of maintaining the tank.  The pH began to fall.  There was the occasional dead fish to be scooped out.  The algae began to cast its verdant hue over the Perspex.  The old man grew restive with the boy’s indifference and confronted him one morning over a breakfast of cereal.  The old man’s weather-beaten hand stirred and poked the Weetbix with low fat soy milk over sliced banana and one or two strawberries the old man had found in a plastic punnet in the fridge.  He baited the boy by asking him whether he had totally lost interest in the living creatures in the family room.

“They’re fucking boring”, said the boy.”They’re all the same.  Boring little fish.  I want something bigger and more interesting”.

The old man was forced to admit to himself that the boy had a point.  There was a sameness about the little fish that, in the absence of acute observation of the different species’ forms and behaviours, could lead the boy to that conclusion.  They agreed to go back to the aquarium specialist and seek his advice.

The old man should have foreseen this as the thin edge of the wedge.

The old man acceded to the boy’s relentless demands and bought a pair of Angel Fish.  Not an exact pair.  The male was slightly bigger than the female.

The Angels were larger than all the other fish in the home aquarium.  They had a stately bearing and hovered regally about the tank, navigating like submarine sailing boats.  The old man thought they had settled into their new home well.

Some days later the old man wondered whether there were as many Neons as he had purchased.  He was not sure.  It was difficult to tell.  They were hard to count.  Was there nineteen or twenty ?  Was it his imagination ?

Author JD Salinger dies

By North America correspondent Kim Landers for AM

Reclusive author JD Salinger, who wrote the American literary classic The Catcher In The Rye, has died aged 91.

In a statement, the author’s son said Salinger died of natural causes at his home in the US state of New Hampshire.

Salinger had lived in self-imposed isolation in the small town of Cornish since 1953, had not published anything since 1965 and had not been interviewed since 1980.

Catcher In The Rye, with its teenage protagonist Holden Caufield, was published in 1951 and still sells more than 200,000 copies a year.

The work has been translated into the world’s major languages and sold more than 65 million copies.

Salinger’s novel captivated teenagers all over the world with its themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, and its author is acknowledged as one of the greatest 20th century American novelists.

“In terms of him being read and being part of people’s lives and recollection of a certain phase of their life, I don’t know who tops him,” said Maura Spiegel, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

She says Holden Caulfield became one of American literature’s most famous anti-heroes.

“I feel that his voice seems to resonate with readers of a certain age in particular. The voice just goes into them,” she said.

“They know that voice is somewhere in them, or it becomes part of them.

“In any case, it’s incredibly intimate. His unhappiness is of a certain variety that is completely familiar to people of a certain age.”

Besides Catcher, Salinger published only a few books and collections of short stories in his literary career, including 9 Stories, Franny And Zooey, Raise High The Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

Neighbours in Cornish rarely saw him and he never returned phone calls or letters from readers or admirers.

Only rumours, infrequent sightings, lawsuits and rare, brief interviews brought him to public attention.

As such, Salinger would have been a disappointment to his most famous creation.

“What really knocks me out,” Caulfield said in The Catcher In The Rye, “is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1919.

As a teenager he began writing short stories, but it was Catcher In The Rye that sealed his reputation.

Early reviews delivered both praise and condemnation.

The New York Times described it as “an unusually brilliant first novel”, but the Christian Science Monitor said the main character – Holden Caulfield – was “preposterous, profane and pathetic beyond belief”.

Knees Up Mother Brown

Geminis have spent a large portion of their lives convincing their friend that they are not a small and somewhat underpowered car marketed by General Motors *.

But the twins, as you well know Gemini, are well and truly worth twice the trouble – and more.

Geminis are by their nature kind, gentle, charming, warm, cuddly conniving children who complete each others sentences and cheat on their homework.

Geminis will come into a fortune when their Mastercard accidentally trips a bug long latent in the local ATM.  Being twins, Geminis will blame the other guy when the bank’s private dicks come rapping on the flyscreen door.

Geminis will purchase tickets to a really expensive Joni Mitchell concert – only to find out that a really tall guy with an afro haircut is sitting in the seat in front.  Fortunately, that person, being a Capicorn on the cusp of a bicuspid, will feel a deep and abiding need to visit the toilet and will not return after the support act (Andre Rieu) strikes up the first chords in the second tune of his set.

Lucky numbers this month are pi/n and sigma (although that was a Chrysler).

Lucky colour is a greyish kind of khaki – quite suitable as a camouflage thing.

* Also with brakes to match, and alleged (but not demonstarted) steering.

Astral Wally

Cosmic Seer

Thanks for Nothing.......

Dear Dymocks Online Customer Service

I have been struggling with your online digital download facility since Thursday last week.

I ordered two books.   Lakatos downloaded

The other – Theories of Scientific Progress was the most important one for an history and philosophy essay due (now) in two days.  It stubbornly refused to download – and then your web download server went guts up and coughed error messages all over my screen.

I sent a message to online support last Friday.  No reply.

Yesterday I phoned George St – since there is no published online support call number.  They put me through to Charlie’s answering machine.

Four hours later Charlie phoned me and apologised.  I asked if he could simply Email me the PDF file that I have already paid for.  He said he would get back to me within one hour.

But there has been no return call and no resolution of the problem.

So I went back to the Email below and tried the link for the second download.

Miracle – it worked !

No.  Just kidding.  It downloaded the first book a second time.

Then I noticed that the link in your Email is the same for both files.

Nice.

I will offer you two options:

1.  The preferred option.  Please send me the PDF today at the latest, or

2.  Cancel the transaction, refund the money and see the whole episode posted up on my website tomorrow.

You can find us at www.pigsarms.com.au –

It’s a website for people who typically like to read books – we get between 300 and 600 visits a day.  We have had over 4,000 comments since we went live in May.

Over to you.

Mike Jones

Virginia Troll

Dear Virginia,

I think it’s time that you and I stopped beating around the bush and that we both recognised my deep and abiding passion for a wonderful librarian-style woman, only slightly my senior.  And how could I possibly be anything but head over heels when I rush to switch on the morning alternative television massively relieved to discover  that Aunty has not replaced you with Scarlett Johansson – as was mooted in the Pig’s Arms men’s convenience last weekend ?

Now, I know that some men (Manne for example and I use the term loosely) has said that he prefers to get up to a woman who looks slightly less like she’s slept in her suit in the park and been dragged backwards through a hedge after a rough night on the tiles, but not me.  I adore those 40 shades of verdant hessian couture draped resplendently over – can I say boldly – a woman’s bosom ?  I’m sure that with so much of the morning news being about combat, that  I should expect a woman to win a man’s heart through hand to hand combat with another woman.  And I’m not for a minute suggesting that Jennifer Kyte, that winsome former 80’s siren could ever give you the slightest tussle, let alone win hands down.  Not even mentioning Jana Wendt.

I think we have to face the reality that going to air before the wardrobe and make-up people have returned from their go-slow protest against Mark Scott’s latest round of cuts, is a pretty tough gig.  But it’s definitely one that you bring off with a certain je ne sais quoi.

I remember with a great sigh the day you left radio.  It was me sighing, not your lovely warm nasal symphonic tones.  But I was richly rewarded when there, seated in dignified repose next to Joe Gilanese was not some minor goddess like Katherine Zeta Jones, but YOU !  Looking for all the world that you were still on radio.  Still talking to me.  Only me.  And certainly not the autocue.

Can I say that I am so smitten that I find it nearly impossible to tear myself away from the small digital Samsung (free with the purchase of a largish LED television of the same make).  I sit there for hours in my singlet and socks despite the deafening call of the bathroom, the minor nuisance of working for a living and the poison pen letters from the little old lady – and her cat – across the road – who even as we speak have their noses pressed to the front window in anticipation of a glimpse of chest carpet.

Virginia, I know that Joe has that coquettish Italian charm.  I know that he has a conmanding grasp of the NEWS, but if you are willing to expand your horizons and take a fresh listen to one of your old radio fans, I know you wont be disappointed.  Return my affection and see what rising up the charts with a bullet really means.

Your greatest fan,

Mistral

Mike Daisey

This is just a few words to introduce an acquaintance of mine.  Mike Daisey.

Mike is one of the great raconteurs.  He specialises in the wonderful art form – the monologue.  His pieces go for hours and he works as you see him above.  Sitting in off-Broadway and many other theatres on the West coast.  He railed against the machine all through the Bush era, and has a diverse range of topics often rooted in history, or maybe history and philosophy of science.  He has about six lines on a single sheet of paper as a backup – and extemporises.

I once heard him  do an extended piece on Tesla versus Edison and another on the Death of Theatre.  Another presentation had the L Ron Hubbard people up in arms and produced a staged mass walkout – that phased him for a few nano seconds.

I met Mike Daisey through his book “21 Dog Years at Amazon” – meaning that he lasted 3 human years as a minion in Jeff Bezo’s monolithic (and Mike might say “evil”) empire.  He was doing phone support – and his stories I found particularly resonating since I had done a similar job – for just one year (1983) for the now infamous Jodee Rich – when he owned “Imagineering”.  That is before he trashed that corporation – which was also before he masterminded the more specular disaster “One-Tel”.

We (that is, Mike and I) exchanged a few Emails about our shared experiences.

One time at Imagineering, the marketing people asked tech support (Steve and me) to write “something technical about new products”.  We had 1,200 products and 900 dealers Australia-wide to deal with.  We were up to our nipples in deeply frustrated novotech retailers and the marketing guys wanted us to do their jobs too !  So we made up a few products, we invented problems with the made up products and also the solutions to the imaginary problems with the non-existent products.  Hence my diatribe on the Hashimoto Krakatoa K1 printer interface with the Venetian blinds in the EEPROMS.  The marketing people published their technical gurus’ sage words and we got some hilarious responses from people who could clearly see that it was totally fabricated – and a joke at the expense of our own marketing wankels.

That was not long before Steve attempted employment suicide at work by responding on the telephone to an irate and abusive dealer with a huge problem that she could “F*ck off because we don’t sell that product”.  He had had enough – but they just gave him a friendly caution, a few beers and a couple of paid days off.  Ah, the good old days…… of acute technical scarcity …..

This was rather more direct action than appeared in Mike Daisey’s story, but I’m sure you get the drift….

He was in Australia last year – but foolishly only went to Melbourne (sorry, ‘Mou).  I gather he’s planning a more comprehensive return for a flash-in-the-pan season.

Anyway, you can sample Mike Daisey’s material at http://www.mikedaisey.com/monologues.sht

You might really enjoy him.  On the other hand – you might intensely dislike his work.

Sometimes I do both.  Mostly not.