Malaria Mondays – Un Will Fully

The contest for building the best robot brought in all sorts of competition to a gray city like environment. Top engineers from around the globe, arrived to showcase their best designs for the venue.

I stumbled wildly out from a dark alley, feet were moving but they felt heavy, arms were comatose, body was sluggish and swaying drunkenly; I was completely out of control and not quite myself. The third person view exposed me as Will Farrell, dressed in a white lab coat. “Go to hell!” I commanded a small street urchin, realizing even my voice was throaty with a hint of whine, just like Will’s.

On the way to the competition, I knowingly gathered bits of wire from the street, hunkered down at a truck-stop and impetuously assembled an electronic creation, hiding it under my coat.

“It was a device of the grandest design,” I thought with monomaniacal grin. “Sure to win me the competition.”

My bulky self arrived carrying a heavy covered bulge. I sat in a small plastic school chair on stage and carefully waited my turn to speak. The announcer pointed and I stood, brought out the device from under my labcoat with blinding speed, revealing a huge ticking time bomb! The crowd gasped… except one small boy.

“They want you to have a job substitute teaching,” said the small boy watching the spectacle.

“OK!” I said excitedly, dropped the bomb on stage and walked off.

The gleaming wide eyed children seamed to shudder when I entered the classroom. One kid asked what my name is. (This is where I experience what it is like to be insane.) I had no idea what my name was… then a thought bubble appeared above my head. Making the sound of a slide whistle as It projected my father, calling me a “bitch” and beating me.

“Uhhh… my name is Mr. Bitch.”

After much laughter from the students, a girl asked me how long I would be here teaching. Yet another slide whistle and a thought bubble appeared showing a birthday cake with some fat girl blowing out candles shaped like the number 16.

“16 fat girls”, I replied.

The classroom sequence kept repeating: A child’s question, followed by a random thought bubble, finishing with an obscure reply.

What are you going to teach us? — Pretty dwarves in dresses.

Why are you dressed in a lab coat? — MST3K (mystery science theater 3000) rocks!

As if a small amount of time passed in a photo montage, I was magically whisked away to an underground car park, surrounded by my stolen cars. Mark, and some very skinny shady Burt Reynolds look-alike thief, and I (remember I still look like Will Ferrell) were looking at a very cartoonie map of my hometown of Quincy (like the colorful maps at a theme park) and plotting our routes to transport my stolen cars to a different location. YES… we would transport the cars through Gullpie ranch road. The thief hopped into a car, Mark and I into another. We drove behind the thief through the car park and to the exit. He took a wrong turn and headed into downtown Quincy.

YOU IDIOT! Stay off the main road! That way goes past the police station!” I screamed to him from the other car.

He stuck his mustached face out the window and laughed, “No cop can catch me! YEEE HAWWW! Petal to the metal good buddy!”

We had no choice but to abandon him and turn the opposite way, So, after a few seconds of driving Mark made a call from his cell phone and I had a bad feeling and didn’t trust him.

“This map is terrible, we are lost,” he said. “I’m calling for directions.”

“That bastard must be calling the police,” I thought paranoidly.

“Yeah, they said our turn is around here some where.”

“Dirty stinking backstabber,” I mumbled inaudibly.

“There it is… but something’s wrong. The Gullupie Ranch sign has changed!”

The regular rectangular sign measures 1m x 2m, and has the words “Gullpie Ranch” in large brown letters with a friendly cream colored background. The other off shooting roads, have quaint carved wooden signs with cutesy names like “Willow Branch Way“. Now, the words “Gullpie Ranch” were crossed out with ominous red letters saying “Decrona Drive“ and the wooden signs were replaced by ruff metal ones repeating “Decrona Drive“ on every side street.

(For those of you who have no idea what Decrona is… I will give you some insight to my days before leaving Quincy. I was courting a nice Capricorn with the last name Decrona, who’s father is the Lt. police officer and chief of the local SWAT team. Kind of a scary guy for a derelict like me. — So, in order to not lose face, I called this girl and told her the dream. Then, asked if she wanted me to change the name or hide some details. She said, “It’s funny, go ahead and tell the dream.”)

Baffled and feeling double crossed by Mark, we drove up the road until reaching a large dark spooky house on a barren red clay hill. I scurried out of the car (no longer Will Ferrel but myself again). Ran up to the large front door of the house and threw it open without knocking. Within the doors there was a very odd series of doors with different ways of opening. (Like MST3K) Some would slide with a whoosh when pressing a button, others would open like clunky gates with a creak, but every door had some sort of mechanism that I could manipulate to release the door. After 6-8 doors I ran into a room with hundreds of dorm bunk beds. The boys that occupied the room were all shirtless, with shaved heads, speaking what sounded like German amongst each other. I backed out of the room slowly trying to figure out what was going on… an army of young German boys. I got to find my Capricorn! I finaly reached the living room. There I saw her covered with gray dust, forced to build a massive 6 foot gray brick structure, that resembled a large brick oven. The father was drinking a tropical umbrella drink in an easy chair, reading the newspaper. I grabbed her hand and she stopped working.

“We got to get outa here,” I said quietly, so the father wouldn’t hear me. “Something weird is going on.”

She simply stood there and blinked unknowingly as if brainwashed.

“Come on. Let’s go!” I pleaded.

I looked into her eyes, the windows to the soul, they cast a dull a glossed over, blank, foggy stare back at me. She was gone. My efforts were futile and I released her hand.

“Goodbye,” I whispered into her ear.

Then, exited the way I came in, through the many doors of the odd German concentration camp. Never looking back.

March 4th, 2008

Our Valentine

A week ago both Mark and I had our hearts broken, torn in two, ripped out and spat upon. We weren’t quite sure how to “break” the news to you. So, we decided to wait until Valentines Day, a day of hope, love, and understanding, to reveal the reason we feel betrayed. We got dumped and stood up by our date. Not just any date… but a long term committed boyfriend.

Yes, thats right! Nick “big heartbreaking chicken” Ostini is not joining us on this trip. He backed out at the last possible minute — Canceled his tickets — Left us and gave up on the hope of true love.

Just so you all know, this isn’t the first time Nick has gotten cold feet on the doorstep of a valentine… During a past V-Day, Nick and I had an elaborate plan to slip a secret admirer ninja turtle valentine, filled with semi erotic stalker observation writing, upon a certain professors desk during class. My job was to run interference so Nick could slip the gag valentine upon his desk. Masterfully, I had the professor so distracted, he was spun completely around. Nick could now freely do his part; walking up slowly, valentine in his outstretched hand… all he had to do was let it go… but he jerked back at the last possible moment and didn’t drop the card.

I should have used history as an indicator and it could have warned me that, Nick Ostini can’t be trusted on Valentines Day. But the worst part about his deceit, lack of commitment, and breaking our hearts is… he used the oldest line in the break-up book…

Hey, don’t worry Nick, we know its you and not us!

Some good news: I have a huge backlog of story’s and dreams to reveal. Plus, I know a few of you were expecting a different post — the one about why Mark and I had to flee the entire country of Malaysia — but it is coming next, promise. This next post will most likely cause my mother to go completely gray, and my Ninna (grandmother) to go bald. Don’t worry you two… were safe now.

A few last words to Nick… happy Valentines Day and we’ll miss you.

February 14th, 2008

Moby Dick

(If your confused – SEE PREVIOUS POST)

Call me Ishmael. Some days ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing to interest me, I thought I would hang out at a bungalow by the sea. I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for the isle of Ko-Tao. As if being delivered for this watery world by two vestal virgins, masquerading as mermaids with alternating fishy bits – girl bit on the top, fishy bit on the bottom, and visa versa – landed me in my own summer with my own spoils.

The old wooden shack welcomed me, wrapping its deteriorated fixtures about, like a moldy blanket. Across the dirt stream, between bungalows, sat two lads on a rickety porch, with beers in hand. The taller of the two had a face as smooth as my great aunt Gertrude’s gum line, and eyes cold as the salty antarctic breeze in October whiskers, but at the same time wild as a catholic schoolgirls grip. The other was short in stature, but not stocky, more like a bendable metal wire. His face was covered in fine threads, like sea urchins lit up by a red Singapore sunset, yet there was a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath to find out what this marvelous beard felt like.

Shamed for skipping the inaudible lip reading course in Nantucket, the lads would murmurer as a ship tossed on rough open waters, occasionally jotting down scribbles on a white square pad of parchment. If I be a pearl in the worlds oyster, and pearls have many mates and know no strangers; I went to greet the barnacles on the deck.

“The bastard took something form me that I will never have back,” said the short one.”Not my sleep, not just my food… something much greater. It toys with my mind like a yo-yo… The monstrous beast has bitten off and swallowed some of my pride, and for that we must capture it alive!”

“Thats quite the task you know?” questioned the taller. “These animals are quite hard to catch, and even harder to contain without escape.”

“I don’t know how we will do it, but we must! I want to stare in the eyes of my assaulter before I kill it.”

“But what would be the scientific purpose of killing it?”

“REVENGE!”

I found out later the two lads had sailed across many seas and countries to arrive here from their home port in California. The taller of the two’s name would be Mark, with a mind like a hair triggered musket. The other would be Abrad, with his thoughts twisted like a black sea in a midnight gale. Together they had devised a contraption Davey Jones would have envied: A mechanism comprised of twigs and sticks carefully carved down to a precise size, with a stark white bucket floating like a ghost in the warm night air, and bait borrowed from a very old happy quaker. It was a rat trap. Comprised and devised with a hell-bit intention, madly set for revenge.

(photos of the trap will be posted soon)

The first night the great leviathan rose up from the cracks, forcefully springing the trap, pushed the weightless canister to the side, and feasted upon his bounty. To correct the mistakes of the first night, the lads added mounds of weight to hold the foot long beast in its place. Dawn of the second morning Abrad awoke, gazed upon the endlessly empty collapsed bucket, and a twitch developed in his eye.

“He squeezed through the crack, Impossible! No more games! I was too gentle with my good manners. If you want something with a devils black soul, one must empty the cavern where a heart once resided. We will turn the bucket over, to squish and bloody the bastard!”

And so they did, flipping the bucket and pounding twenty-five nails into the hull of the rats coffin, and filled the bucket of doom with eight pounds of murky fresh water, not fitting for any human to drink. Abrad stared upon his twisted contraption and smiled with a smile so sinisterly, only a wicked demon could comprehend its meaning. The only thing louder than the approaching booms of a thunderstorm was the sound of Abrads maniacal laughter, tearing out every cry but his. Not a soul slept soundly in the complex that night, incuding myself, because thoughts of the anticipated bloodbath and screams roamed through our minds; everybody was awake but Abrad, who was fast asleep, calm as a sail in a dead wind.

Ugly and monstrous the beast was, and come soon to find out, wickedly wise to boot. The leviathan carefully, ate the surrounding trail of food and cleverly missed the bag of bait, attached to the mechanism, that would deliver its final death blow. The following morning, there was no blood and the only screams were those of Abrad’s, when he flicked the perfectly working contraption with a stick, sending the harpooned hammer crushing down. My friends, there is a wisdom that is woe; but there is also woe that is madness. Night after night the rat would somehow avoid the snare, tormenting Abrad’s twisted soul, dragging him deeper into the dark sea of insanity. As Abrad departed the bungalow, he looked back with hate and anger in his eyes, vowing to return with the tide, another day, and seize his revenge.

February 1st, 2008

Malaria Mondays – Schizophrenia

The time is upon us… as well as killer mosquito’s. So, once again we are tugging on the magical melofloquine’s tale. This dream takes place after both Mark and I took two pills, at the same time, because we forgot to take the other pill earlier in the day. The label read, separate doses by at least four hours. WHOOPS!

To get the full effect of my dream I must tell you our sleeping arrangement. We are currently living in an A-frame bungalow on an island in the gulf of Thailand. It is a pile…with a view of broken children’s toys, mo-peds on blocks, and raskely stray dogs running about. We are literally two naked children short of a Quincy trailer park, basically a roof over our heads, its fantastic! Mark is sleeping in the large bed with a huge pink mosquito net with frilly flower pattern and I am sleeping above him on a wooden shelf residing above the liquor storage for the bar, directly under the corrugated sheet metal roof. During the day, bright sunshine pours through the multiple cracks and holes in the floorboard and roof; mosquitoes pour through at night.

The dream started with me looking at a scattering of mug shots and photographs in a police station or some sort of observation room with a brushed metal table. I was in this establishment because during the previous day, I was running from a killer or escaped mental patient with horrible looking face. He was chasing me along some dark alley trying to stab me with a very military looking knife. I escaped and the killer fled into darkness, which brings me to the police station to find the psycho. Looking through the hundreds of photographs scattered on the table, I stumbled upon a vertical series of 5 photos taken at a photo booth. The first photo in the series, was the typical cheesy picture of Mark and I smiling, arms around each other. The next photo was very much the same except, he was no longer smiling. Each successive photo after that, showed him distancing himself away from me, with different proportions of his face distorting… His face seemed to melt and mold into a horribly disfigured being. His face turned a pasty white, and his skin flaked off in chunks in the same manner of a week old croissant. The hazel eyes and thin pink lips of Mark were closed forever and sewn shut with large diameter black thread. His short black hair grew to nipple length turning a dead dirty gray… It was him, the man who tried to kill me… it was Mark! Heat rushed up my chest, through my neck and into my head. Chills shot up my spine and into my head, starting a brain battle of fire and ice. I then experienced that feeling, like somebody is watching you and felt a warm breath on the back of my neck. My body spun around wildly forcing me face to face with my psycho murderer… Mark.

I then woke up; breathing heavily, caged in my white cloud of a mosquito net, eyed the thrashing Mark down in the bed below me, thought about our malaria medicine’s side effects (schizophrenia), pictured his knife, and listened to the scratching sounds behind my head. What? Scratching sounds?

Rolling over, I grabbed my headlamp and startled something by my head… the high pitched screech was tremendous, shaking every nerve in my body. Quickly my headtorch shot on and directly in the beam was a shrieking, foot long, plump, filthy rat, a foot from my face. My body had never moved so fast. “OHH NO! SCREW THIS CRAP!!” I screamed and dove back-first onto Marks bed, kicking off the ledge as I fell.

Not wanting to get back on the shelf with that monster, I stayed in bed with the possible schizophrenic killer from my dream. Needless to say, I was curled up on the corner of the bed as far away from both of them as was humanly possible.

In the morning, I vowed to capture the rat, that disturbed my peaceful environment. In the next post, I’ll tell you about the week long obsession with the rat entitled… “Moby Dick”.

January 28th, 2008

Australia Recap

It was recently been brought to my attention that I payed no homage for the wild adventures in Australia. Reasoning for this escapes me, but it could be the fact there were less posts for both Australia and New Zealand, most likely due to the high internet prices and the adventures away from society’s city-grip (bandit camping in the bush). In the words of Tom & Hannah Kaminskas this is the true tale of Australia.

Dear Brad,

Firstly, you and your shenanigans have been sadly missed since your departure. I quite enjoyed being a jobless alcoholic (the wife, Hannah, says I still am…) as it felt just like I was back in Quincy.

But… WHERE’S THE FARKIN’ STORIES!? How else will I convince all the Quincy guys and girls that Uncle Tom’s kinky granny-flat downunder is the place to be. You are their ambassador Brad. To think that of all our shenanigans downunder together, all the detail your readers get is that Tom and Hannah are good at “showing Australia’s beautiful landscape” – tucked in between a Thai prostitute story and Grampian cave paintings of “naked wild haired girls riding bareback on horses”. This won’t do at all.

What of giant tassie devil-eating cod fish, and having your way with rambunctious, wild, mountain mermaids (the fishy bits)?? Pies. How about crazy broads on BBQ bikes that snap men at the knees, swim in toxic algae lakes and then have menage a trois on the grass while you joust to the death with yours truly while billowing whiskey fumes atop a freaky tall-bike ?? Sausages. Did your death-defying rockclimbs from the ferny depths of the Shoalhaven o the tops of the dizzying sandstone escarpments of Nowra (teenage pregnancy capital of Australia) not stimulate your quill into penning creative words? Pies. And (quote) ‘the best campsite of my trip so far’ in the fisherman’s cliff-face cave, hundreds of feet above a crashing ocean, where monstrous Hammerhead sharks snapped at your heels as you dangled fearlessly from a climbing rope to taunt them… did this not warrant a mention?? Sausages. Snorkeling with 10ft stingrays (Steve Irwin ‘the crocodile hunter’ still holding on), Bottle shop guards and New Years bonfire beach parties, pies, drinking tinnies of VB while canoing on creepy alpine lakes, abbo fires, sausages, Rams Heads, incredible mountain biking adventures (and the occasional homo-erotic photo shoot), wrestling dinosaurs in the Jurassic canyons of the Blueys between rappels and dark ‘swims of death’, pies, pub freaks, bandit camps, sausages, flouro crawdads, getting drunk at my work hanging SALE signs on xmas eve, pies, Mrs K’s xmas feats, homebrew with the less cool sibling, and of course, chasing rain and dark amongst the eerie atmosphere of Sweet Dreams at Sublime Point (and you didn’t even need malaria pills – just a tightly puckered butt-hole and a trust in the climbing rope and my anchors). Come on Brad… where’s the love?
And the snakes brad, THE CRAZY POISONOUS FRICKIN’ SNAKES EVERYWHERE!!!! pies. sausage.

I’m sorry we didn’t find you and Aussie wife, like I found my wife in Quincy – we tried. (no, we didn’t really – immigration told me to keep you and that stinky beard out of our gene pool). But my mum says you are welcome anytime, and that you left your slippers under her bed. Dad.

Little Brad, we love you. We miss you. Come back (and bring Brett, Steve, Johnny and Carol and we shall eat pies and be be drunk for eternity! Oh, and Chris Marty… RRrrrrrrrOWWWW!!).

Until next time, thanks for the rant, safe travels, and you are always welcome here in paradise (or on our couch when we move back to Quincy to open a pie shop).

Uncle Tom and Aunt Hannah

So, thanks for that Abo-fire under my ass you two… although, I never did see a poisonous snake. This just in… to all our readers: MALARIA MONDAYS IS BACK, BABY!

January 22nd, 2008

Rule of Third – Part II

The ding echoed off the pale white walls of the hidden staff elevator, reciprocating off the empty corridors like a mountain yodel. A single shadow exited, roamed the dimly lit halls and cast itself upon dull yellow doors. With every light rectangular frame, the dark shape would enlarge then shrink. Faster now, the growing and shrinking shadow like a fan accelerating ever faster. Singular outlines became unnoticeable as doors shifted into blurred mustard streaks. Transfixed upon the drumbeats of two aproaching blue rectangles, all movement halted. The shadow burst through the outside glass doors, transforming into a person amongst the nightlight. Carefully I climbed, reaching the tortilla chip slab of red. Stars of the city shown below as smooth heavy humid night air was devastated by the 30th floor jump from a clay Mexican styled shingled highrise hotel roof…

Wait a minute – what’s going on?

Question: Weren’t you guys just leaving a prostitute bar? 
Answer: Well yes we were… in part one. To clarify, Part two is the following night.

Question: Why is Brad jumping off some hotel roof?
Answer: I am jumping off a roof because… well… I should probably begin at the start of the night.

We were drinking in a little beachside Vegas called Pa-tong. Mark was just getting challenged by a wild thai bartender, in a game of connect four, for a drink. How could Mark refuse a challenge? A guest in her battle field, carefully he thought about each placement of the pieces, studying and anticipating silently. As she swooped back and fourth in her over exaggerated emotions… mark sat quietly and occasionally stroked his chin. Even a bitter beer tastes better when free, and Marks win was delicious. A loud whine exploded from her frowning face as Mark placed his last piece. She stormed off unhapply to retrieve his victory beer, but returned with a smile. “Your next!” she laughed and pointed to me. Like General Picket’s last charge I raced into the game wildly shooting and whooping. The win and beer was her’s. But not just any beer, the best in the house, the price of both our first beers combined. “Come here you guys!” she yelled across the bar from a stump with hundreds of protruding nails, “New game! More fun!” The old Hit-A-Nail-With-A-Flat-Angled-Hammer game. During the final contest both Mark and I had found the technique to beat her…

We left and walked down towards the beach, through a gauntlet of massage parlors. For some reason (my beard) these vultures pounced upon my carcass and didn’t confront Mark. So, like Muhammad Ali I attempted dodged these massage girls punches. But one girl latched on around my waist, vowing never to let me go. Pressing her head into my chest she tried dragging me upstairs into her parlor. As slow and gentle as possible (It’s hard to run in flip-flops and didn’t know if she had some sort of massage pimp), I tried moving her away. Her vice grip was unweilding, and reasoning with her to let me go was useless. So, I told her that I have to meet my buddy for a beer and must go. Her response was… “I do thing with beer.” With only guesses what that could mean, I broke free and streaked over to the now laughing Mark who was just watching me from affar, through the entire ordeal.

Needing a beer after my attack, we wondered into this warehouse filled with a cakewalk of endless booths. Each bar booth looked exactly the same: simple black wooden bar with a large mirror behind, Christmas lights, and a pool table at the side, two girls at the helm (One to play pool with. One to serve you drinks.) We picked a quieter booth and asked how much it was to play pool. “Free if you play with me,” said the bartender. Mark and I looked at one another and knew… time for more games.

Mark and I lost each other at some point during the night, probably when the 30 story neon highrise caught my eye. Secretly entering and avoiding the reception area I boarded a service elevator in the housekeeping section taking it to the top floor. That should bring us up to speed…

My planned jump landed me safely to a dark balcony, with towels and swimsuits hanging on chairs. Looking through the glass sliding balcony door revealed two lumps in a dark large hotel room bed. Silently, I entered the room and looked at the two people sleeping. Thinking I must prove to Mark I was here, I found a bottle of sunscreen on the nightstand/table. Took it and breathed heavily a few times over the people (eww creepy) and left through the balcony. Next stop. Fourth floor… The hotel pool and spa for a night swim.

January 16th, 2008

Rule of Third – Part I

One might think this post’s title, was describing Aussie Tom’s amazing photography…

(Thank you Tom & Hannah for putting up with my shanagains, for the welcome into your home, and for showing Australia’s beautiful landscape. Sorry Hannah for turning your Husband into a jobless alcoholic during my stay… Be sure to thank the wacky pakie [Farrah] for the beating I gave her bike. So, from the bottom of my heart – Thank you, I’ll miss you, and see you soon, in the States!)

…but no, I am referring to being back in the third world again, Thailand. A country of great food, prostitutes, oil massage, humid weather, squat toilets, prostitutes, beaches, ladyboys, foot-massage, prostitutes, body-massage, deep-tissue-massage, malaria Mondays, wait… did I mention prostitutes?

During our first exploration of town, we unknowingly wondered into a big dark bar-type building. Behind the bar counter were 100 girls lined up as drink orders. Mark went into the bathroom and I followed a group of 15 men… right into a VIP room. CRAP! (If your wondering how I knew it was a VIP room, the armed security personnel, dancing pole in the center of the table, and the numerous sleazeballs drooling, kinda gave it away.) They shut the door and I was trapped! Instead of acting calm and walking out… I panicked bolted for the exit, attracting more attention to myself. I practically ran into Mark’s arms with numerous security on my back. He handled it smoothly and took a seat at the bar while shooing off the security flies. He then, told me his adventure in the bathroom…

“The towel guy snuck up behind me and started massaging my back at the urinal. When finished, he massaged me over to the sink and two other dudes took my hands and washed them.”

I took another glance at the 100 women, who were obviously “night companions” and we decided to get the hell outta here and into more trouble.

To be continued…

January 13th, 2008