“I was hunted by the wolves and heckled by the crows”

Im on a plane.

I thought you would all like to know that. Gives the writing some context I think, when you know the writer is an unnatural hight above terra firma. And when you take into account tiredness it excuses madness.. this blog is actually being posted in Hong Kong.. thus making it cool and foreign.. lol

Amazingly I am unable to connect to wireless internet (on the plane), what a surprise. My computer actually feels the need to tell me that.

So, im on my way home. In the last six hrs I have eaten better than for ages and ages. On a plane for goodness sake. But its Qantas, they are being very good at looking after us, which is much appreciated.

So, the last few days have been in London, doing a bit of tourism, shopping all that jazz. And of course meeting aussies, we have invaded, invaded I tell you. You cant go anywhere without hearing the accent, let alone the youth hostel kitchen, its not safe.

I did meet one nice one though, a nice lass from Cairns, we had the room to ourselves and spent Sunday night in hysterics. Which was quite a good way to end the trip.

We discussed the word dishy, a book I brought recently which has reminded us to use ‘struth’ more often (literally its ‘gods truth; condensed so its quite potent in its real meaning), and ‘Drongo’ too of course. So that was fun.

Fossils in church bricks were mentioned. Pratchett came up, and I was stoked to be able to show someone a bit of the HogFather movie.

We also discussed various forms of religion, I don’t remember why, but Satanism came up, probably because of Camden Town. Now I had never thought about it much before.. the thought of torturing small furry animals and calling it religion always was a bit sick to me, well very sick. But I was wondering what they get. All religions have a reward, heaven, virgins and sherbet etc. so what do you get for worshipping the devil? There are three obvious possibilities:

-Hell (in which case its a lot of effort to go to, when according to the majority you’ll get there anyways)

-To be a demi demon, and continue horrible practices on small furry animals (slightly tedious and repeditive, but attractive to the right kind of person)

-An apple on a stick. (it wasn’t really that serious of a conversation)

Now, why I came up with apple on a stick, I will never know. But it did lead to the possibility that, well what if it was all miss translated? What if its really all about apples on sticks? Not heaven, hell or sherbet, but apples. It would make sense with the whole adam and eve thing.

What if you get to the gates (pearly or fiery either way) and instead of eternal whatever someones standing there with an apple on a sick, looking incredibly embarrassed at your vexation saying “im sure it was all very clear.. worship me and its an apple on a stick.. admittedly god X has a bit of a better deal, it’s a toffee apple on a stick, but you still get the apple.. and a stick.. we just upgraded to carbon fibre ones”

It would be somewhat of a bummer I have to say. Great potential for a comedy radio presenter doing a commentary though.

Now please don’t take offence at this, it was all for pure comedy value, and not meant to offend in any way, although its very hard not to offend when it comes to religion.

What else? Something less offensive.

There was a person from King Island in the kitchen. Now this surprised me, again showing my lack of ability to think things through, or think at all.

It had never occurred to me that people came from King Island, I assumed that it was purely a place from which Beef and really nice Yoghurt came from. Obviously I should have thought.. hey yeah.. yoghurt in containers does NOT just appear.. it needs some level of human intervention. Cows have not, to my knowledge, developed the ability to make milk go off in just the right way to get yoghurt.

I do like the idea though, of cows milking themselves in sunny green pastures, making the yoghurt, packing it, and then (to avoid human intervention in the form of posting) putting it in floating boxes when the tide is right so that it can then float to Melbourne like a message in a bottle.

I think that’s an awesome idea for an ad campaign for King Island. Potential all the way.

Ah, now some of you will know ive had a cold for the last two weeks or so. This of course has led to me coughing, and anyone coughing on a plane has a certain leper quality to them, what with air recycling and Bird Flu. Now sadly there are some things too serious to joke about, which is a bit of a shame, good jokes have to die in the making. So ill share it over the net, where its not so bad.

So, we thought I should cough a little on the plane, to clear some seats around me, I then thought, to make this hypothetical situation more amusing I could add “damn I shoudn’t have let that turkey sneeze on me”.

Personally I like the idea of a turkey sneezing, knowing how funny dogs look when they sneeze, well add all the weird red dangling things and a beak. Now add a person nose to beak with such a sneezing creature. Now try and think of a legit reason why someone would be in that situation, now add a tissue.

Sadly its not really a laughing matter, and the potential of ending up in Quarantine for years and years totally removes any potential from the whole scenario.

Maybe it was just amusing because plane trips are sooo boring, and all humour has been removed from something that isn’t really that amusing in the first place. Ah well. So much for not being offensive.

And back on the religion track, I’ve found it interesting. Three (potentially five) of my Agnostic friends have become adamant Atheists in the last small while. One of my Agnostic friends has done the reverse and gone Catholic. Which is a bit harder to follow. But this sudden conviction across nationalities has been quite surprising. I’m wondering if anything particularly un-godly happened while I wasn’t looking. Perhaps they discovered that it is actually all about apples on sticks, that would be pretty off putting, although wouldn’t lead to Atheism, something else probably. Maybe its come with age, and the feeling of disillusionment after leaving school. It has led to some interesting conversations though, and the potential that we have messed it all up amazingly. I don’t know that religion is supposed to be a common thread throughout travel, but people do seem to be more and more open about it, and desiring to discuss it. I think Religion and Philosophy, Morals and Values and Globalisation have been more overriding and noticeable that anything physical in this trip. There has been more conversations about Globalisation than visits to Cathedrals.

Of course you cant take pictures of conversations, but it has been awesome. There are some incredible people out there. Adamant, persuasive and intelligent, right and wrong. Its been real, and good.

So keep your powder dry. (I like that better than take care) While I spend time sitting in a seat millions of miles above normality.

And see you soon... and don’t trust sniffing turkeys.