I was going to bung this in The Swamp but then I thought it's not actually Swamp worthy so I'd put it here instead. (It's not Swampworthy because The Swamp has a certain style about it, my blog doesn't - it's just me airing the windmills of my mind.

It's just that today there's a fucking cyclone happening. Here, cop this...

I landed a new job the other week.

Just me, the boss and three other blokes but we are the foundation of a whole new department and I'm pegged to co-run my half of the arrangement with a few extra responsibilities thrown in for good measure.

The first of the new arrivals landed on us on Wednesday.

One other bloke, two women and a...

May I be struck down dead for saying this...

A goddess.

Unbelievable.

What's more unbelievable is the fact I'm telling this to all of you.

Rat, the consummate misogynist going wobbly at the knees over a woman. But wait, there's more.

And it's worse.

She is not only mind bogglingly attractive - not in the Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss sense of the word - but in that down to earth, downright earthy sense of the word. In other words, that eminently obtainable sort of attractive that makes thinking of anything else damn near impossible. Yeah so?

Well, besides being distractingly sensational in the visage department, she's also got a stunning personality. I mean she's like Instant Mate - just add coinciding presence and there's an instant friendship. She's impossible not to like. Distractingly impossible to ignore.
But wait there's even worse.

She's younger than me. I'm not being reality distortingly attracted to an older woman for once, this one is much younger than I am. I checked. I actually asked how old she is when we were riding up in the lift together. I know you're dying to know how old she is but suffice to say she is well and truly legal even if the thoughts flooding my head are really really immoral.
And she's so damn friendly, bugger it. I don't care that the html tags probably won't work, you get the idea.

She has her tongue pierced too and I've seen Pulp Fiction so I know what a tongue piercing is all about. Does it get any worse than this?

Well, no.

She is unbelievably distracting, that's true BUT...

Like the newsagent's wife - I haven't told you about her yet - she has one fatal flaw.
Despite the Oh God Attraction hereinafter referred to as the O.G.A., she is a weeny bit on the umm dumb side. Not much, just enough to bung up a weeny red flag.

And yes, she's a little bit blonde too. Just a bit. More mousey brown than blonde but enough blonde to be unnervingly noticeable. Numbingly dumb, just not enough to be mind-numbingly dumb. Only enough numbingly dumb to dampen to a degree the throwing up of a major red flag.
It's just fortunate I have really good eyesight.

Damn, she's so cute though. I mean unbelievably cute. Not perfectly cute like Meg Ryan just enough to make me want to throw a herd of Meg Ryans out of the way to sit and stare at my new workmate until my really good eyesight becomes a distant memory.

My other source of refuge is she can't spell to save herself. I have the honour to enter all her work into the system for despatch to the branches and her lack of any skill whatsoever in the legibility stakes is something to behold in itself. She can do her job, no doubt about that - which, of course makes it worse for me because of the O.G.A. because if she couldn't do her job, I'd get really bloody annoyed really bloody quickly - and she doesn't do her job in eye range of me - because if she did, there's no way I'd be able to do my job, I'd just sit and stare at her all day.
She has a smile to die for and her laugh, God in Heaven! Bugger that too. Why wasn't she born with a hare lip. There's nothing inherently wrong with a cleft palate unless you actually happen to have one and it serves beautifully to ensure you will never be endowed with anything approaching an O.G.A. thereby sparing me the inconvenience of being attracted on an Oh God scale.

I must introduce her, somehow, to the kid round the corner. He's the same age as she is. If he hooked up with her, that would spare me the thought that somehow she might actually be distressingly single and available. He's also got a massive chick-magnet: A BMW.
Wonder if he'd do me that one big favour.

I knew he'd come in useful one day if I made sure I kept on his good side all these years. Who knows, he may even thank me properly for the introduction. Mind you, he might not be enamoured of

Nah, he would be. He's like all 19 year olds; fast, loud and horny as all get out. What real red-blooded male wouldn't leap all over a like minded godess with a huge O.G.A. factor.

Bloody hell. Why me?

I love this job. I get to be exactly the way I was meant to be and then this happens and now mother nature is having her say and she doesn't care to be ignored and I'm putting too many ands in one sentence.

My job will save me. It's more important than the sudden and pervasive quantities of testerone streaming through my giblets and I will remain steadfastly professional towards her and the others in my team.

I will. I am rehearsing a mantra for Monday morning...

Mmmmmmmmmmm My Job....... mmmmmmmmmm my job.....

More to follow, no doubt...

I bet the job I have is better than the job you have.

I get to talk to people all day until the time when I get to do even better things and it's all in the name of helping people help themselves. What's more I was offered this job by a beautiful woman and now it's progressing apace. (No, the job, not the beautiful woman. Sheesh, you should know me better than that by now.)

My first week was such a blinder I can scarcely wait to start the second week.

Great people, great location, love the office and fkn LOVE the job and it's going to get even better very very shortly. When they give me a key, I can see myself setting up a camp bed in there and working 24/7 (ish.)

Go on tell me how jealous you are.

Ok, here I am dutybound to blog something which, for me at any rate, is always a pleasure.

Call me every dirty name under the sun but there are times when I just LOVE name-dropping and having been poking around one of the few blogs actually worthy of the time, I'm taking this opportunity to bomb google with a link to THE blog. Not just any blog, but THE blog.

The mother of all blogs.

Now here's something you don't know.

In my other bit of blattery, I chided the BLOG god because of an extended period of introspection and he finally got jack of it - and rightly so I might add - and let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of it. Funny thing is though, another subscriber thought it was him and cursed me out black and blue. The BLOG god was being introspective, the other bloke was, correction IS, seriously in danger of disappearing into his own navel never to be seen again.

He took a swipe at me after the third in the Self Help trilogy of my newsletter came out, but only because he doesn't have the means to come after me with a gun.

In this battle of egos, I'm left wondering where I sit. On one hand, the BLOG god told me off and that was fair enough, but this other bloke went ballistic. Touched a nerve I guess. I love my subscribers and fortunately I haven't lost this chap, but his ego must have taken a pounding for him to come out swinging like that. My ego was, on the one side restored to its rightful place in the natural equilibrium, but on the other, it wasn't remotely budged by this other chap - whom it must be said I hold in fairly high esteem as well - who went right off thinking I was writing about him.

Here's why I wasn't moved:

There's a place for poetry and it's not under my eyes. I hate poetry. Despise it. I like odes, but poetry is for cancerous old browniehounds entering their dotage and taking the opportunity to behave like teenangsters and I spurn them openly.

I'm also not fond of teenangsters.

Am I dithering a bit here? I suppose I am a bit but I have an excuse and if any of you had taken the time to explore where those hyperlinked words go, you'd understand instantly why I have taken this opportunity to express these loosely connected thoughts here.

Here's the bit that got me:

I ran across the following via Technorati while ego-surfing for CBO links. David Churbuck, the blogger what wrote it, is an old pal (more about which below), but we'd been out of touch for years. So, just for the record, I had nothing to do with this glowing endorsement.

So that's why I've taken this opportunity to splatter CBO links all over this particular entry.

Incidentally, and this is a confession and a half on my part, I replied to the email I received with words to the effect that next time any of my beloved subscribers badgered me to put out one of my newsletters, I'd tell them to fuck off. So, just to set your minds at rest, I was not in anyway directed to make amends for my latest screed nor was I admonished in such fashion that I feel or felt obliged to resume my place in the general scheme of e-things. No. The reason I am so blatantly fawning - yes fawning - is because unlike the preceeding episode which precipitated my three in a row rant against navel gazing, the linkages above all lead to something I not only enjoy immensely, but reckon anyone brave enough to click on one of those links will also enjoy just possibly enough to even thank me for pointing them in the right direction.

After all, this is the bloke who started me writing on the internet in the first place.

Don't like it? Blame him. I'm sure he'll give you the same response I will for wasting his time but will be fascinated to know who sent you.

Would that you did because you'll thank me later if there's even a shred of decency about you. Lord knows there isn't one about me.

How do people get better in hospitals?

The food is enough to kill an ox. I got served this nukey boxed laundry sponge the other day which was supposed to be a crumbed fillet of whiting.

I took one look under the tin lid and pushed the tray away before it attacked me.

"What" you may ask, "was I doing back in hospital?"

Well, I'm glad you asked, and I'll provide as much detail as possible so you don't have to send emails asking for even more detail because I don't like that sort of thing.

It's common knowledge I've had two heart attacks over the last 30 months, but what you probably didn't know is that the bits of me that are supposed to keep my blood healthy are themselves not entirely functioning on high beam. The result is my blood is full of shit that shouldn't be there and the trespassers in my system love it. In 2003, one of these little bastards made its home in one of my valves, brought its friends and lovers around for a housewarming and before anyone knew what was going on, bug city was a thriving metropolis, thriving its little heart out - in my heart.

Yes I know, what a bunch of bastards.

The upshot of it is I get angina on a regular basis and bad tempered on an almost permanent basis and hospitalised with annoying regularity.

Years ago when my kidneys failed and I spent 6 days in hospital, the food was great. I ate better in hospital than I do at home and I'd snoop around looking for seconds. But since 2002, it has been a gastronomic nightmare. When I was last in hospital in 2003, my hopes of a return to culinary form from those in charge of the mess tent were dashed. It was just tasteless, tepid papier mache dross, the likes of which you wouldn't even expect in a railway diner. How they could possibly have made it any worse is a mystery, but they have.

I've been in and out for the last two weeks (give or take) with more than one overnight stay and my desperation to be discharged is directly proportional to the quality of the food. Or more accurately, the apparent danger of eating anything they put in front of me.

I had to get discharged if only to allay my hunger. Never mind if I had to be readmitted 36 hours later, and it's not like they care. Every time they readmit me, they get a budgetary allowance from the government for more than it really costs to keep me from slipping off the twig altogether.

That carefully disguised item they tried to tell me was fish looked more like something they'd hit with a broom, stunned with lemon juice then smothered with corn flake crumbs before finally leaving it infront of a radar because the ovens were on the fritz.

Sure they can autoclave the cutlery for the sake of hygiene but what's the point of eating with perfectly sanitary cutlery when the meal itself is so damn suspect? It either wasn't properly dead, or it had been dead for 270 years. Either way, it was not going to find its way past my epiglotis.

I don't get scared very easily - that comes with not giving a shit about very much - but when I lifted that lid the other day, I damn near panicked. If someone tried to make me eat that, my only recourse would have been to hit out or make a run for it. And I wasn't properly dressed to make a run for it.

My blood has enough shit in it without adding to it artificially by eating food that defies description as well as identification.

So that's about when I discharged myself, spurred on by an instinct for self preservation and a rumbly tummy that wanted something it could not only hope to ingest, but could actually convert to something useful to me and not the colonies living in the valves of my heart.

I wobbled my way to a taxi and went home for a Vegemite sandwich, a cup of coffee and three cigarettes before falling asleep on the couch after the cricket finished. (Australia beat West Indies.)

I'm not supposed to be smoking either. It's bad for my heart. Too bad. I still maintain trying to stop me smoking is bad for the whole world. I'm angry, nasty and ornery enough without being denied my little indulgence.

Only thing is now I haven't worked for more than two weeks and I can't even afford a bus ride to my next job appointment or even to put juice in the car for the appointment after that.

But I still have the internet until Feb 15 when my ISP tries to get it's monthly due and discovers there's nothing there. After that, your guess is as good as mine on whether or not I shall be able to invade cyberspace and frighten up a few lefties.

Here's to the future: Let's get it over with as quickly as possible.