Superheroes arn't as practical as I once thought

Sometimes I write stuff that has no useful place in the known universe.

Until now...

Transcript of Police Interview
Date: 15/2/04

Suspect Warren Troy

Troy: Then he steps up onto the ledge of the apartment block and as he goes to leave I said, "Hey, thanks for saving me." Then he goes "Anytime you're in Gotham you're…" but he stood on something loose and it just broke off, and he was gone. And there was this thwack, like…. I don't know... a watermelon hitting a car…

Officer 1: How did you know this?

Troy: What?

Officer 1: How do you know what a watermelon sounds like when it hits a car?

Troy: Oh… I don't. I guess he just sounded like a guy falling fifteen floors in a latex and rubber suit. Anyway I looked over and he's just laying there all sprawled out like a puppet when you cut his strings.

Officer 2: What strings?

Troy: You know, puppet strings.

Officer 1: You were talking to a puppet?

Troy: What?

Officer 1: You were having a talk to a puppet after it saved you?

Troy: No, I’m just trying to explain the picture to you. He looked like a puppet when you cut it’s strings, it just lays there all twisted and bent.

Officer1: Puppets don’t have strings

Officer 2: That's correct. Puppets don’t have strings. They’re like hand puppets. The man puts his hand up the puppet – they don’t use strings

Troy: That's not correct. Look... look... the guy looked like scribble, okay? Human scribble in a bat suit? So I call out...

Officer 2: Hang on... just...does puppet have one 'p' or two?

Officer 1: Just the one.

Officer 2:....

Officer 2:.... alright, continue.

Troy: So I call out... "Hey mister… hey Mister are you okay? Hey! Are you….” And I just stare and he's lying there looking, I don't know… pathetic... I felt sorry for him. Like, he's this big crime fighter, putting terror into the hearts of criminals and he's just lying there. He looked ridiculous… why would an adult do that? Dress up like that? Restricting your vision so that you fall off a flipping building, it was sad.

Officer 1: And was there anyone else?

Troy: Yeah…. then this kid comes out, looking really stupid in a yellow cape and a little black mask and green boots

Officer:1 Green boots?

Troy: You stop me at green boots? And he looks at him and then looks up and starts screaming at me. "You killed him, you killed batman"

Officer 1: Batman.

Troy: Yep. Batman.

Officer 1: The little boy in the red boots.

Troy: Green.. he was in green boots. That’s what he said. “You killed Batman.”

Officer2: That sounds like a confession.

Troy: No… that’s what the kid said. And I'm like, looking around going, "no, he fell… he fell off!"

Officer 1: So you’re saying he just fell off.

Troy: Yeah…but the kid was screaming at me. He reaches for the guy’s belt all the time yelling and yelling, clearly not paying enough attention to whatever he was trying to do. Then suddenly there's this little pop and all this yellow smoke, real weird colour, came hissing out everywhere. Then he's just rolling and screaming, reaching out at nothing…. It was horrible.

Officer 1: So what did you do then?

Troy: I …well.. I pushed the guy on the roof off.

Officer: What?

Troy: The guy who tried to mug me? Yeah, I thought, ‘Man, whose going to protect me when he wakes up?’ So…he was really heavy but I managed to get him off the roof.

Officer 1: And what sort of sound did he make?

Troy: The sort of sound you hear when 110 kilograms of adult male falls on a kid in a yellow cape and green shoes.

He has nothing to say...nothing

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I have a couple of people to acknowledge for the existence of this... weblog. First, Lincoln, he has been doing this thing for a bit and while I've always been intrigued by blogs, he's the first person I know well who has a blog. A student of mine from some time back keeps a blog - but I've forgotten the site.


The other person to acknowledge is the enigmatic Panda. That's not actually her name, like it's not "Enigmatic Panda". It's Just Panda. She put a spin on the whole 'Blog' thing that just blew my mind. She inadvertantly encouraged me to look into all of tis a bit deeper and what I found really... well, it's huge. Some have some terribly important things to say, some have some have absolutely nothing to say.

I figured, I've got nothing to say too.

And by jingo, I'm going to say it. Softly at first, but then louder and louder until others catch the cry, and they will then cry out with one accord,

"HE HAS NOTHING TO SAY..... NOTHING" except there will be one guy and he will say "NOTHING" just out of time with everone else.

So yeah... I was talking about Panda.

(Awkward pause)

That reminds me of a story. Pandas look cute and cuddly but there was this tourist guy, in China, where Panda's are native (actually where the Chinese are native as well, which probably negates the whole tourist guy thing I just wrote) and he figured he'd climb into the Panda enclosure and give it a hug. The Panda took exception to the guy. The guy and the hug. The guy and the hug and his camera. The guy and the hug and his camera and his arm. Suufice to say the man parted ways with his arm with a little help from the Panda, and with a little further encouragement, his life. Wild animals are real funny about personal space. Nasty. Nasty Panda. The Chinese guy hugging the Panda went right round the world. Something to encoourage people NOT to do. If it's in an enclosure, they spent all that money for a reason. You know, and I know this is probably not the right thing to say, but people who hug wild animals get what they deserve. It's Mother Nature's way of culling those who shouldn't really be contributing to the gene pool. Take the Grizzly Man. The Bears certainly did. Hope his mum never reads this.
I tried to find a link to the news story, but to no avail. Instead check out this link and enjoy watching a hunter getting the crap knocked out of him by an angry deer. You will have to scan down the page a tad to find the link.

And just to make it crystal clear, Panda is not a real Panda. She works in a book shop and that's how I met her. Through that shop I bought a copy of the book Barons to Bloggers: Confronting Media Power. The blurg on the book summed up the importance of the whole blog thing:

Whatever one thinks of Rupert Murdoch or his ethics, when a mogul of his stature stands on a public platform and predicts the end of God-like media figures telling people what's important, you begin to realise that there's something seismic going on in the world of communications. Seismic, but unpredictable. -

Eric Beecher, Publisher,

crikey.com.au

The picture of the Panda? This is a dramatic reconstruction of events leading up to the attack. Note the constricted pupils, a dead give-away that Pandas are about to attack. That and the screams from the people on the other side of the enclosure.

Teaching and Terrorists

Well, it’s the second post and the feedback hasn’t been glowing.

Panda didn’t have much to say other than make the astonishing observation that my blog could be called “Just in limbo”.

In all my life no-one has put that sentence together. Suffice to say my wife was very impressed. Panda, very sharp girl. By the way did I mention she attacked a Chinese tourist, took his arm right off. Terrible.

Linc thought I had been taken over by some sort of alien life form. He actually asked me that. He suggested that I write in English. I spouted all this crap justifying the disaster by claiming that my first blog was a critique of the two extremes of blogging. Which it was, but you know I had to explain that so.... yeah, it failed.

Sigh.

So… Part Two.

I work with teenagers, I am a teacher. I won’t tell you what I teach, we can work up to that later, although I can tell you that I’m not a manual arts teacher – so I don’t make bombs.

There are moments that, well, leave you gob-smacked. Not because of how jaw droppingly naïve the individual is, but how much physical danger they put themselves in. Mainly from me.

I’m not really a person to upset.

I’m not a fan of smiling sweetly at a cheap shot made by a kid; placing my finger on my chin with arms folded in thoughtful repose and pointing out the error of their ways.

No.

I want a big messy pile of blood, gore and carbon left where I’ve struck.

I don’t believe in yelling though.

Yelling at a student leaves you with no place to go. You impress no one. You’ve got to leave them with the distinct impression that something terrifying lurks beneath your restraint. Something that requires a parole officer to check up on you each night at 6pm. Yelling just makes you look like an imbecile – all that teeth and spit, and then you loose the faculty for lucid speech so your witty retort comes out so far short of what you wanted.

For example, here’s a transcript of typical midmorning English classroom incident:

Teacher: I’VE ASKED YOU REPEATEDLY TO GET YOUR WORK OUT AND STOP TALKING!

Jinny: (gums slapping with the chewing of gum) I wasn’t talking.

Teacher: RIGHT! I’VE TOLD YOU!

Jinny: (gum makes strange little popping noises) But I wasn’t talking, that was Sharron!

With eyes blazing you turn on Sharron. Sharron is colouring-in her pencil case and could care a tiny bit less than zero that you exist. She casually turns to talk to her friend you’ve been remonstrating with and begins to continue her point about Barrie or Bescuit or whatever his damn new age sensitive mispelt name is when you actually interrupt her. Needless to say she exhibits her annoyance with the roll of her heavily made up eyes.

You can’t remember what happened next. Except you play it back in your head and you seem to have come across like a children’s television co-host with your arms outstretched pretending to be a bear. And yelling. Lots of yelling. And there’s makeup and blood all over your hands.

We put more and more restrictions and demands on teachers and then wonder why the only people teaching are those who are out of their mind, trapped or just can’t find other work – the shortage of teachers makes schools even more desperate and prepared to employ people who don’t brush their hair in the morning.

Having said that there are good days. Don’t let me put you off teaching. Just go in with your eyes wide open and the safety off your Glock.