Flying and falling

I went cross country skiiing today for the first time since the 80s and it was awesome. You know, I really could have liked North Bay a lot more than I did when I was a teenager if I had liked sporty things then. In a way I'm glad I didn't, though, since I'm not too bothered about being untalented at them now, and since then I wouldn't have had any sort of gadfly driving me around the world, which I quite enjoy. And I did a lot of fun things that wouldn't have mixed properly with being sporty, like drugs.

Well, I might have done different drugs, but sports drugs look so unpleasurable. I guess a lot of the high is from watching your performance get enhanced, but considering I'm sufficiently pleased for myself if I run around for an hour without stepping in a dog turd, I think they'd be wasted on me. I don't expect drugs to enhance my performance - that's not what they're for. Drugs are either to stop me from getting diseases or else to make everything look pretty. Probably why I've never enjoyed blow.

But back to cross country skiing. It was ace. Even being very bad at it, it still felt like flying. Like rock climbing, doing it once and only falling down five times left me enamoured, and like rock climbing, I can't do it back in Australia. Actually I CAN do it - there's snow in some mountains in the south and because everybody wants to ski downhill the cross country trails are often free or cheap - but I won't, because the prices being charged for the shittiest accomodation there are incredibly extortionate. Surprise, surprise. 'll do it in New Zealand the next time I visit Romola, I guess. And retarded as it sounds, I'm thinking of buying some gear here, second hand of course, because if I spend three days skiing next winter it'll be cheaper than renting. Hmmmmm. The fucking vagaries of living on the retarded end of the planet . . .

A bit of culture

It was the F-word's birthday recently so I treated him to a few days in Melbourne as a kept man. It was a bit of a backhanded present though, because fuck me sideways, did I ever need a few days in a city. I needed a few days of Asians and music with basslines and beautiful man-made objects and people who aren't staggering pisspots still out after 6pm and different kinds of food that I'd never tried before.

This past weekend I had my first durian. I should have done that in Singapore but we were with my boss all that week, who considers durian about as appetizing as baby shit, and I was having all sorts of other firsts that week too, most remarkably my first full week eating only fucking marvellous food . . . oh fuck me Singapore . . . I'd take a caning for ya. Anyways. Back to earth. I ate my first durian in Melbourne at a Thai restaurant, or rather I drank it in smoothie form, and it was good. Probably not representative of a nice fresh durian though, because it was also unremarkable, utterly unremarkable - like a creamier sort of honeydew flavour - and from all I've heard elsewhere durian is nothing if not remarkable.

So anyways, in Melbourne we ate beautifully, the best we've eaten since that week in Singapore, and all of it various sorts of Asian of course (a Malay restaurant in St. Kilda's topping the list - ginger fucking salsa, fuck me), except for one pizza with some of the F-word's family on Lygon street after a really, really emotional Aussie Rules football match. Wow, was it emotional. I never think of myself as someone who is into spectator sports, but when I actually make the effort to go to a game I always get sucked into it. When all those people are there in the field performing their little hearts out for crowds more populous than my whole hometown, I get utterly sucked into their human dramas.

Also Aussie Rules is a ridiculous thing for humans to do. In the game we saw, two guys, within five minutes of each other, tore their ACLs, an injury I've experienced myself and which was, you know, really shitty . . . and there those poor boys were being carted off the field. It was gladiatorial. Which of course calls to my disgusting, decadent Roman blood.

So I won't go to another such game for another year or so, not only because the human drama was so intense, but also because I can't fucking stand sports fans. So many fucking retards in such a small space when you're in a stadium. I mean, there are all those poor boys on the field, playing their hearts out and ripping their ACLs and doing really astonishingly physical and co-operative feats of awesomeness, while a bunch of stupid fat drunk assholes who wouldn't be able to jog around a cricket pitch without taking a break to suffer a fucking coronary yell insults at thier own team whenever something they don't like happens. It gives me the fucking shits, I'll tell ya.