Fish and Rice
I was diving the other day, actually it was about three weeks ago but out of habit I say the other day. There were a lot of fish milling about and it struck me that fish are always eating other fish. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, I mean, I quite like to eat fish as well. Can you imagine how damn loud it would be underwater if fish could scream? They’d all be screaming “Fuck No, please…not me..” Munch…Silence. Burp. Imagine the noise. But it was quiet. All I could hear was my regulator gurgling away.
I was being naughty. I was meant to be at eighteen metres but I was down at thirty four metres. Why? I don’t really know. I just was. I was so damn hungry. I had held off eating because I wanted to be really hungry, that way my dinner would taste even better. I do that sometimes. Weird but cool - a bit like having a silver attache case handcuffed to your wrist. What??
So I was down there swimming amongst the fish thinking about food (sorry about that bit about the attache case) And I thought ‘rice’. Rice is what you need to eat when you are really, really hungry. When you want a thousand of something. So rice it was going to be. Secretly I thought fish and rice would be good. But I whispered the thought, in case there were any mind-reading sharks around that might get pissed off.
It was time to ascend. What a lovely word. Ascend. And ascend I did.
Jake.
p.s. I had fish and rice for dinner and it was creepy.
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Tags: diving, fish, hunger, rice, scuba
Mammalian Dive Reflex
- Hey dude.
- What?
- You ever heard of the mammalian dive reflex?
- Definitely not but I guess you’re going to tell me.
- Yes. It is really cool.
- Right.
- No really. Basically, there’s this reflex that is built into each one of us. It’s a reflex that seals, otters and dolphins have that helps them hold their breath for such a long time.
- Right.
- Listen. It really is cool. So basically you have to stimulate the reflex to take advantage of it.
- And pray tell, why would you want to take advantage of it?
- So you can hold your breath for longer dude.
- Go on.
- So when I go freediving I can stay down for longer, and dive deeper.
- Man, sometimes you scare me. That freediving stuff is super dangerous.
- So is crossing the road.
- Well yeah, but freediving is for adrenalin freaks.
- And?
- If you say you are a freediver people will lump you together with base jumpers, parkour dudes and naked alligator wrestlers. Honest.
- Well, sorry but freediving is awesome and the mammalian diving reflex is awesome. – End of discussion.
- You started it.
- OK, fair point. Can you change channels, I hate watching this stuff on swine flu.
- Dude you are more likely to die freediving than from swine flu.
- Don’t start on that again…
- Want a beer?
- OK, you’ve twisted my arm…now do you want me to tell you how to stimulate the mammalian diving reflex?
- Dude, if you must…
- Well to trigger it off, you need to submerge your face in cold water….and then…
Couch talk….Jake and Bob.
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Tags: couch talk, freediving, humor, humour, mammalian dive reflex, swine flu
Animal Talk
- Does my bum look big in this?
- We’re elephants honey, our bums look big in anything.
- Oh yeah I forgot.
- Liar. We never forget.
Imaginary Elephant Conversations
—————————————————-
- Here’s a challenge for you Bertie.
- What.
- See if you can walk and not move your head.
- I can’t do it.
- Told ya…the head always moves. Weird’eh.
- Yeah, pretty weird…
- Hey that’s my crumb you’ve got there.
- Sorry. You distracted me.
Imaginary Pigeon Conversations.
Jake.
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Tags: elephants, humor, humour, pigeons, talking animals
Rodeo Shark
So there I was thinking that everything had gone nipples skywards when the raw meat that was attached to the nylon rope that had become entangled around my left ankle, just above my flipper, freed itself. The six metre long Great White veered off and swallowed the fist sized piece of meat in a flash and then began to circle me.
Well thanks heavens that rope is off my leg I thought. For a moment there I might have been in trouble.
I noticed that the shark was making every tighter circles around me.
I guessed that six kilograms of horsemeat had done nothing but whet his appetite.
I decided to withdraw my diving knife from its holster on my leg.
I bought it at a sale in a diving store in Belize a few years ago. It was either the yellow handled knife or a poster of a girl in a mermaid outfit but I decided my wife would rather I got the knife. Plus knives are manly things. I could sit at home chipping away at bits of wood and stuff and look cool, strong and rugged.
The knife was flawed though.
The problem with the knife was with the holder, not the knife – it was razor sharp. The holster however was crap – it was a bit too small and the knife had this little lip on the handle that got stuck whenever you tried to get the knife out.
The shark was getting pretty close; I could even see the suckerfish stuck to its belly. They looked hungry too.
I began yanking at the knife, trying to free it from its crap holster. I looked up at the shark. It was heading straight for me. I jerked the knife free and promptly sliced it straight through my thigh.
The shark seemed to notice the pink cloud that was forming around me.
I was pretty sure this was not a good situation to be in. My leg felt hot.
Damn that knife is sharp I thought.
I started singing in my head to calm down but it was no use. I was a bit nervous and kept singing the chorus over and over again. It was a song by Abba I think.
Just as things were looking a bit grim another shark arrived on the scene.
I wondered if they might have a fight and kill each other off and I relaxed a little bit.
They seemed to be friends though and my chances of being a spectator at the big shark death fight looked to be waning.
I decided to swim straight at the largest shark and grab hold of it behind its dorsal fin, keeping well away from its jaws. I was going to ride it like a rodeo bull. I put the knife in my mouth, like Rambo and swam as fast as I could.
I woke up holding onto my pillow, tangled up in the sheets, bathed in a pool of sweat, with the corner of my wife’s pillow in my mouth. She was still asleep.
So no more cheese before I go to bed, even if it is full of calcium and good for strong bones and teeth.
Today I’m going to file the plastic lip off my yellow handled diving knife. Better to be safe right? What if my dream comes true?
Jake.
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Tags: belize, cheese, great whites, humor, humour, knives, sharks
the hotel room
- The first few minutes of a new hotel room are the best.
- Huh?
- I said the first few minutes, when you get into your hotel room, you know, for the first time, they are the best.
- Sorry, am not with you.
- You know how its really cool when you’ve managed to get the plastic key card thing in the door and all the lights come on and light up your room. How you’re always a bit tired and you’re looking forward to seeing your hotel room? Well its really cool. I love that moment. The moment when you see it. That bed, the sheets so tightly tucked in. The television, the little table, the weird retro phone that never works. You know there’s a bible in the top right hand drawer. You have to figure out the lights. You go into the bathroom and check out the miniature soap wrapped in frilly paper. The toilet with its paper thing sealed across it. Telling you that nobody has ever crapped in it before. I love it.
- Dude you are weird.
- Yep.
- Sometimes you freak me out just a little bit.
- Sorry man, it was on my mind.
- Right. Get to sleep. I’m super tired and I’m working tomorrow.
- The sewer diving thing? You still doing that?
- yeah.
- Hows it going?
- It pays the bills.
- Right.Ok. Nite fella. Sleep well.
- Thanks dude. Turn off the light OK?
- OK
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Tags: hotel room, hotels, humour, soap
The removal man.
You know that momentary feeling of panic you feel when the rope that you have tied around your waist, that is connected to a double bed that you are lowering off a three storey rooftop goes so tight that you cannot slip out of it, when you realize that the bed is dragging you towards the edge of the roof and you cannot stop it? No? You mean you’ve never tried to lower a bed off a rooftop?
I blamed my shoes. They simply weren’t offering enough grip. I was leaning back straining will all my might but to no avail. The edge of the flat rooftop was fast approaching and there was nothing I could do to prevent myself being dragged over the edge to certain death. What a bummer. I have done some stupid things in my life, and agreeing to lower a wrought iron framed, double bed off a friends rooftop, with a rope tied around my waist was one of them – probably one of the worst actually. Had I been pulled over the edge of the rooftop I am confident my demise would have made it into the Darwin Awards Hall of Fame.
In situations such as these, all honour must be put to one side. Any semblance of pride or dignity must be cast away. I screamed. Loudly. I yelled like a man that was about to be pulled of a rooftop by a bed tied to a bit of rope. Damn my shoes. Damn this bed. Damn that concrete.
Fortunately for me my cries of alarm were heard by my friend, who, apparently, was busy chatting up a cute girl that lived on the first floor. It was miss pretty that heard my screams. Together they managed to halt the beds downward progress, giving me enough time to slip out of the rope and raise my eyes skyward. I recall feeling almost embarrassed at the distinct possibility of falling to my death.
I remember thinking that it was a cruel twist of fate that the mattress was not attached to the bed in some way. I wondered if I could have tried to land on the bed, three stories below? Would I have survived? I think not but at the time, it would have been worth a shot.
I made a mental note never to tie anything around my waist again. I looked back at the long line of black rubber that I’d left on the rooftop. The line ended eighteen inches away from the edge of the roof. That was close.
Panic? Me? Nah…I was just a little bit concerned that’s all. It was all under control.
Yeah right.
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Tags: beds, darwin awards, moving house, removal man
Weird Thoughts
- Dude.
- What?
- Do you ever think weird things?
- Huh?
- You know, weird things.
- What like in dreams? Like when you dream you’re kissing this girl you really don’t even think is cute and you wake up feeling sick and dirty and need to jump in the shower right away?
- No.
- Oh. What then?
- Weird things when you’re awake.
- Umm….yeah….sometimes….Yesterday, when I was waiting for the bus to arrive I thought about what would happen if I got shrunk down really really small, like the size of an ant. How would I get home? Would I get eaten by another bug on the way? Even if I survived crossing the roads, and managed to get across the gap into the lift, how would I press the button? What would I do? And you know I got so stressed thinking about it, I had to think of something else.
- Dude, that is weird.
- So….do you think about weird stuff then?
- No.
- Oh. Well that’s a bit shit then. What am I some freak?
- Yep. Major freak.
- Thanks bro.
- Want another beer?
- Yep. Make it a freaky one.
Jake
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Tags: being shrunk, jake, weird thoughts
monkeys
- Monkeys.
- What?
- I said monkeys.
- Yeah so, what about them.
- They’re like us.
- No they aren’t they’re massively different from us.
- Nope. They’re so similar apparently only one tiny little bit of them changed somewhere along the line that made them monkeys and us humans.
- Bullshit.
- No really. I saw it on a television programme. It said that the difference between us and monkeys was less than between us and fruit.
- You are, without doubt, a blithering idiot. Fruit? We are so massively different from fruit its ridiculous. You can’t even compare us to fruit. Of course we’re closer to monkeys than a pear or a lychee, or a grape. I mean think about it dude.
- OK maybe the fruit bit was wrong. But what about Bob. He’s one hairy dude. He is almost a monkey right?
- No dude, he’s not a monkey. Although he is pretty hairy. Look – just think about how you’d describe your average monkey OK? Then think about how you’d describe, say, your dad. They are pretty different right?
- Nope. My dad sits on the sofa scratching his privates watching television. Monkeys are always fiddling with their privates. My dad eats a lot of fruit. Bananas, he loves them. No pips he says. Monkeys love bananas. My dad stoops. Just like a monkey stoops.
- OK, Ok, but can he climb trees? Can he jump from branch to branch?
- Well, no…but he’s old now.
- Dude, drop it. We’re not like monkeys. We’re way better than any damn monkey.
- How about that dude on CNN that keeps going on about the credit crunch?
- OK, he’s a monkey. But the rest of us. We’re humans.
Jake.
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Tags: bob, cnn, credit crunch, evolution, monkeys
I have this thing for time travel at the moment. In that, I really enjoy imagining what it would be like. Where or more appropriately, when, would I go? I mean, what year? Would I go back ten minutes? Nah, that is daft, nothing exciting happened ten minutes ago, well not for me at least. Nope, I’d have to go quite a long way back. That first trip would be scary as hell though.
I mean just imagine it. You’ve got this little black box (black things are sort of secret high tech you know) and you’re sitting there about to punch in the date and co-ordinates. Because ah ha, you see a date alone is useless. Imagine that you’re sitting on your sofa in Barcelona, like I am. You want to go to watch Woodstock. If you just plug in August 15th, 1969 you’ll end up in a field (I’m guessing) on the outskirts of Barcelona with absolutely nothing going on. Because that is where I am in the present. So with time time-travel you need a destination as well. Not only that, it needs to be clever. I mean you don’t want to transport yourself to the fast lane of the M25 at rush hour do you? By the same token you don’t want arrive in a field near Lockerbie to have a piece of fuselage hit you square between the eyes.
So it needs to be quite a smart little device.
Right, so I’ve figured out that I want to go and watch Ali fight Joe Frazier back in Madison Square Gardens in 1971. What would I wear? I mean if I turned up wearing clothes from late 2008 I’d look rather out of place. What about if I decided to head back to the middle ages? I’d have to find a fancy dress shop first before I went back, or I’d be lynched by a mob in no time for looking like a heretic or something.
So time travel has its problems. And I’ve not even started on how you get back. The transport device would have to be robust, in a Casio G-Shock kind of way. Fall into a river? No problem. It’s got to work. Get a bit cold? No worries, it’s got to work. And how would it be powered? You don’t want the damn thing to run out of juice whilst you’re away on your time travels.
You’re in a field, smack bang in the middle of the Zulu War, thousands of warriors are heading your way, whooping and hollering, spears at the ready and your little device beeps and says its low on battery. Not good really. Imagine that, stuck in a field about to be slaughtered because you forgot to bring a solar charger.
Language would be a problem too. And I don’t just mean foreign languages, even English would be tricky. The South Bank of the River Thames, London, July 23rd 1665. Let’s say you arrive safely and don’t get run over by a horse drawn cart. Good luck with trying to understand spoken English back then. You would not have much of a chance of making yourself understood. You’d have to be careful about germs as well. You might pick up a nasty disease; the bubonic plague was rife back then. In fact I’m sure you’d have to go through some sort of quarantine before you came back to the date of departure in case you brought any nasty ancient diseases with you.
Let’s think about who you’d talk to for a moment. Lets say I decided to head back in time to have a chat with Princess Diana, before she was a princess. You know, a nice informal chat, over tea and cakes perhaps, or a glass of wine over a light meal of fish, rice and fresh mediterranean vegetables. What the hell would you say to someone that you know is going to be killed in a horrific car crash in the future? What about James Dean? It’d be tempting to warn him about fast cars. JFK – fella, please just skip the parade today OK?
So for now at least, I’m going to give time travel a miss, instead, I’m going to put on some 80’s music. It’ll take me back in time without any risk to body or mind. Unless of course I play anything from the 1982 Euro Vision song contest – that would indeed risk mental dysfunction and, in sufficient doses, could be just as dangerous as the Bubonic Plague.
So it’ll be Dire Straights then. You can’t go wrong there. Nice and safe. I’m off on a journey. Music will be my transport device. See you later…don’t stay up I may be a while…boom-sha-ka-sha-ka.
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Tags: dire straits, the bubonic plague, time travel, zulu wars
Roll’em
- Sit on the sofa next to me dude, we’re going to do this video thing.
- Oh yeah, the video thing. Cool. Are you sure we’re gonna get on Saturday Night Live?
- Yeah man, its gonna rock, we’ll be super famous dudes, we’ll have fan pages on Facebook and stuff.
- Cool. Can I say ‘roll’em’ ?
- Yeah, but wait I’m trying to set up the camera a bit, hang on. OK cool you can say it and I’ll press the button.
- Roll’em dude.
- Hey there Pete, hows it going?
- All good here man. Am psyched to be on the vid.
- K, so we’re going to talk about your aspirations.
- What?
- Your aspirations dude, what you want to do.
- Right.
- So, what are they then?
- My asphyxiations?
- Your dreams.
- Dude I dream lots. Especially when I’m a bit stoned. Last night I dreamt I went down to Venice beach with that chic from Hero’s and we got really wasted and ended up messing with each other in the sand, then this little freaky dude comes along and asks me for a smoke…
- Dude, sorry to cut your story, I mean your dreams for life, like what you want to be doing in a year, in ten years, your progression, you know what you’re aiming for.
- Oh right, yeah…sorry man. I’d like to be super wealthy ya know, get interviewed by Forbes magazine and WWF mag and stuff.
- WWF mag? OK whatever Pete. What about the credit crunch, does that worry you?
- No dude I have a plan for the credit crunch. Basically I’m going to do what GM and Ford and those dudes did. Get bailed out.
- What?
- Yeah bailed out…so I’m gonna spend like a bastard, get some cool sound equipment, max out my cards then when the shit hits the fan, get bailed out. Throw my hands up and say dude, shit, sorry man can’t pay the rent, help me out OK?
- Ain’t gonna work Pete, the government only bail large companies when if they go bust it’ll make millions lose jobs and stuff.
- Oh right.
- Yeah doesn’t seem too fair’eh.
- Nah. Seems like a crock of shit dude.
- Want a beer?
- Yeah same again. Buds rock.
- Dude Buds suck. Did you know in Belgium they have beers that’s as strong as wine?
- No way.
- Yes dude, some beers they like make them three times. Over and over, they’re called triple made beers. One beer is like having three beers or something.
- Shit dude that’s cool.
- And they have fries with mayo on them.
- Gross.
- No really, they don’t call them fries though, they call them freets.
- Freets?
- Yeah and they serve them in old newspapers.
- No way. Can you still read them.
- No they are in Belgium language dude.
- Oh.
- Yeah, and you can get freets and have a triple beer at the same time. They even serve beer in macky d’s.
- No way.
- Yes way dude. Macky d’s serves beer.
- Cool. Dude you know so much shit.
- Thanks bro.
- Pass me another bud. Dude you left the camera rolling. I think you just filmed my feet.
- Shit sorry forgot about that. Hey cool shoes bro.
- Thanks I took them from the swimming pool changing room.
- Man you’re gonna get Chinese toenails or whatever they call it.
- Athletes foot.
- Yeah that.
- No dude I was wise to that, got me some of that sports powder, filled the shoes up and left them overnight before I started using them.
- Cool. Dude you are de boss.
I’m sure this is the sort of stuff the guys that gave me a lift in their truck talk about on a Sunday night…
- Jake
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Tags: belgium, credit crisis, credit crunch, fries with mayo, frites, humor, humour, triple beer
