The Gap Between The Pauses

Learning to enjoy huge amounts of life saving beet root.

I’m not a good flier.  Although not aerodynamic, I am referring to my psychological attitude to powered flight; the fad that started at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina with the Wright brothers and will, any day now, disappear from society like the hula hoop and efficient customer service. I embark on any aeroplane with trepidation. I think of it as a potential fiery tube of death.  A winged cylinder filled in a split second with a vicious orange fireball, the heinous result of a tiny spark, from an ill-maintained circuit, igniting tons of aviation fuel. People try to help by saying things like, “it’s more dangerous driving on the roads.” I know they have statistics on their side, however, if the engine stops on my Toyota Townace, then I am not 30,000 feet above ground in a machine that the Internet informs me weighs approximately the same as 56 African elephants when fully fuelled. (Yes, the Boeing 747, not the elephants.) There are no engines, so we glide. We travel pretty f...

Existence is a real head trip, huh guys? I was thinking about how sad things could be and that made me sad. So in order to conquer the feeling, I sourced some of the most sad imagery I could find. And in so doing, I created a film about how sad existence can be, sometimes. Do not watch this video if you have recently lost some money at the track or ruined your laundry by mixing white items and colours. What I am trying to say here in this video is so infinitely sad, that not even a brisk episode of Two and a Half men will cheer you up. Get ready for The Profound Sadness of our Existence here on Planet Earth. The music is Horst Jankowski from his album Verve Jazz Club. Mr Trivia

I had only planned on getting the above items.However, the vending machines in the place I work are programmed to take your money and give you nothing in return. I required a bag of Sour Squirms. They were in the bottom right hand corner compartment - E8. I put a fiver into the note-snatcher, heard $1.50 clatter into the coin return. The large black coil holding The Squirms, rotated one turn and released the bag, it shuffled forward two centimetres, then stood teetering on the ledge, just above the pit you grab your goodies from. I willed it to fall. It trembled on the brink like a plump diver waiting for the referee's whistle. After about five seconds it became clear that my paid-for bag of Squirms was content to stay where it was - like a portly Greg Louganis, frozen in time on a sprinboard to nowhere. There was no way I was going to allow this to happen, but because I too can be described as portly there was also no way I was going to be seen sh...

This is what happens when you leave a Multimedia student alone with a whiteboard marker. I just turned around for a moment and there it was. Sitting on top of my large Macca's cap. I ask for a small one to minimise the afterburn, but the kids at the Joondalup Golden Arches were feeling generous. But I digress. You work with arty types and they'll make art out of anything. Like Picasso's bull, although I probably mean "Bull". Anyhow that's how I ended up with an original Ozy on a Monday morning. But this photograph is all that survives. That's what happens when you use my morning mandarin for a canvas. Mr Trivia

This is Channel 9's idea of a promo for the movie Summer Holiday.

Orac was a super computer in the 1970s BBC sci-fi series BLAKE'S SEVEN. If only the iPad were even half as cool as this...

C15 Espresso. 15 Riseley Street, Applecross, Western Australia 6153. Bacon and Poached Eggs ($14.90) and English Breakfast Tea ( 6/10 ); Scrambled Eggs on Toast ($12.90) and a Short Black ( 6.5/10 ). My breakfast pal and I have eaten at C-15 before and at these prices we think that adequate is not quite what I had in mind when I shelled out 15 Aussie Quid. Mr Trivia

Sent from my ever-lovin' iPhone

Some quick thoughts on the Slap Chop.  NOTE: If you don’t know what that is or how it works spend some time watching the famous infomercial. You won’t even need to watch the whole thing.  You’ll get it before the first minute is over. The Slap Chop seems okay. I don’t like it quite as much as Vince does. But Vince also likes the Sham Wow so his judgement is in question as well as up for sale.  I wanted a Slap Chop because I don’t like chopping vegetables. I do it six days out of seven and find somewhat dull. I first learnt to chop vegetables as a kid working in my parents’ various restaurants, so I’ve have sliced a myriad of onions, a plethora of cabbage and a several tonnes of carrot in my time.  It’s boring and a tiny bit dangerous. Not sky diving dangerous, but certainly ‘get me to the emergency room, stat!’ levels of threat. But my main objection to the Slap Chop is the size of the appliance. The celery, potato etc that go into it, are all sliced at least o...

Ipoh Garden Restaurant , Canning Highway. Mount Pleasant. Foreground: Ipoh Combination Horfun (fried, mild) 5/10 : Background: Ipoh Combination Laksa (hot,spicy) 8/10 . Cost with pot of Chinese Tea $11.00 per head.

When I was in Primary School back in the 1970s in Western Australia, I went to a school that taught reading comprehension in all the usual ways but also used an American teaching aid that we referred colloquially as SRA cards, but an hour or research on the ol’ internet has persuaded me that I was, in fact, one of millions of Gen X (and 2nd Wave Baby Boomers) who encountered the SRA Reading Laboratory Kit.  SRA was Scientific Research Associates a Chicago based publisher of Educational materials (thank you Wikipedia). But their tautologically named teaching aid was kick-ass for a word nerd like myself. I recall it as a box stuffed with cards. Each card had a short segment of writing on it and then some comprehension questions. You’d answer the questions on a separate sheet they provided and if you were correct you got to move on to the next card. This was self-paced learning at its best as far as I was concerned. Boring, si? NO! Because the genius part was this – the whole sy...

Mr Doyce and Mr Meagles choosing the right millinery  and thus owning Mr Clennam While World Cup Fever has swept your home and your nights are awash with chanting fans and the hum of the vuvuzela, Little Dorrit Fever has infected my abode. Fear not Dickensaphobes. Although I think this 2008 adaptation of Charles Dickens serial novel by television writer Andrew Davies for the Beeb has much to recommend it, I am not going to assail you with tales of Edmund Sparkler, Tattycoram or Cyrus Squickneedle (yes, I’m making up that last one). I will focus on but a single element of Little Dorrit . Regency garb for men. The story is set in the 1820s and there are endless scenes of men scheming whilst wearing that era’s version of the top hat. Because I’ve only ever understood the top hat as somewhat of a fashion relic, I’ve never seen the attraction. My lefty-ratbag sensibility sees them as the kind of idiotic headgear some stiff would wear to an event such as Royal Ascot. Leaving asid...

This video is such a melting snowflake of individual perfection that I daren't describe it for fear of 'tearing the butterfly's wing' of its rare beauty. Suffice to say, you will learn and grow as you experience the sights and sounds of this amazing half-minute of meta-imaginative glory. Mr Trivia

I’m an insomniac. I am rarely asleep before 3am. I have a friend ‘Colin’, who occasionally drunk dials me late at night. He’s never managed to wake me. Once I was actually about to go to bed. It was 4.30am.  Lately, when the phone rings, I would like it very much to be Colin posing a difficult philosophical question with that complex, sozzled mind of his, because recently, it’s Dad.

When was the last time we praised the House of Tar-jay? Yesterday I was in there and discovered this generously sized basket - nay almost a mega BUCKET - in which we, the consumers, can place the treasures we find at that citadel of retailing opulence. Maybe they pinched the idea from Colonel Sanders , I'm not sure, but the fact that we will be able to BUY MORE without wheeling a cumbersome trolley through the aisles, makes one feel happy and satisfied with the Target experience. Mr Trivia

 According to the Wikipedia ‘tsk!’ is American English and ‘tut!’ is English. Both are supposed to be onomatopoeic representations of the disapproving sound one makes with the teeth and tongue to indicate disapproval. Personally, I prefer the ‘tsk’ to the ‘tut’ but let’s focus on the doughnut and not the hole, fellow zeitgeisters. I learnt early on the power of the ‘tsk’ from my mother. Strangely she didn’t overuse it in real life, preferring to reserve it for watching television. Some of jewels of 1970s and 1980s television were tsked over with great gusto. The bombing of NUMBER 96, Fergo the Freak’s reign of Terror in PRISONER, JR’s latest dirty trick in DALLAS; all were occasions upon which Mum would shake her head and tsk at the acts of low character she saw taking place first on the Healing black and white set, then on our Kriesler 36-inch colour telly. Over the years, I’ve become used to Mum’s habit of dismissing a character’s act of evil with the slow, tut. Usually a tr...

The classic Australian Icon of clothes drying. The Hills Hoist of the '50s and '60s. Note the pitiful modern clothesline in the b/g. The traditional Hills Hoist is as Australian as an Irish theme pub, a dim sim in a baine marie or a replacement coat hanger car radio aerial bent into the shape of Australia. I never feel more emotional about this wide brown land than when I hear the Qantas tykes singing Sir Peter Allen's "I Still Call Australia Home." Despite the fact I am always in Australia when I hear it. That's Oz for youse, she gets into your system and never leaves. She's like a hood kind of malaria. Remember, peeps, Australia isn't K Rudd or James Packer or even Jennifer Hawko. Australia is Daryl Somers and Ossie Ostrich. G'day and good luck to thee and thine. Mr Trivia

Monday. Sick at home and thus unable to educate today’s youth to not say LOL as a word. Not that I can manage this even when I’m there. I discover day-time television is as terrible as night-time television with a couple of subtle differences. Day-time TV is filled with infomercials about buying life insurance without a medical and infomercials for bagless, cyclonic Dyson ripoff vacuum cleaners that can pick up a bowling ball using just suction. Night-time telly is filled with infomercials about how the whole world is going crazy for Zumba and informercials with scantily clad ladies (some of whom can pick up a bowling ball using just suction) who want you to call them NOW for just $20.00 a minute.

The first exciting instalment of  Mr Trivia's science-fiction tale is here!! The Insomniac’s Calendar – Part 1 It was late. God, it was 2010. There were things he could have done. Things he could be doing. But Rory Insteppe options had been reduced to one unpalatable choice. Get out of his flat before the Firecops arrived. He’d been warned five times already. A sixth time would mean jailtime for the popular weather blogger and alternative universe conspiracy theorist. Rory wasn’t famous in the old sense. Not like Betty and Barney Hill the first recorded UFO abductees. Rory was a famous as anyone on public Internet who had their own show. His was called MULTIVERSE EXPOSED and featured tweets from friends, and the occasional hatebomb from games he’d formerly been addicted to. For all of 2008 he’d been immersed in THE LAST BLOODY CAMPAIGN OF WAYNE THORPE’S BOGAN VAMPIRES. If he hadn’t been employed by Centrelink he would have lost his job. At the time Centrelink were locked i...

Hey Zeitgeisters,  I know it felt like I left - and that's because I had. But after what only amounted to some weeks of absence I have returned to my blogspot 'blog - my first - my favourite - Mr Trivia's Tract . I attempted to reduce my 'blog footprint, but unfortunately it wasn't to be. Like an irritating house guest who has spread his belongings and knick-knacks all over your formerly well-ordered home, my messy self is here to stay. What's with the above not-very-interesting picture at the top of this entry? That's for my buddy Phil Jeng Kane's Tumblr. This is his workaround in order that he can have both an "image and text in a text post" whatever that means. Why he attempts to keep up with the teenagers on Tumblr I'm sure I don't know. Anyhoo, keep watching this space, I will be back sooner than you think, my friend. Mr Trivia P.S. Note to self: Apparently old school Tumblr had a problem with uploading an image straight ...

The Big Breakfast at the Secret Garden Cafe , Angelo Street, South Perth. Cost $18.00. This gets you 2 x fried eggs, 3 x rashers of bacon, 2 x chipolata-style snages, 1 x hash brown, mushrooms, half a tomato, a leaf of lettuce, a slice of orange, 2 x slices of toast and a blister pack of Western Star butter. My dining pal said, "The bread is a sort of Tip Top Multigrain and the lettuce leaf is garnish at best so I'm scoring this a 7/10." I am being a sliver more generous with my Noodle rating (7.5/10)

We've all heard the meme. It's the 21st Century - where are the jet-packs? Personally, I don't want to share the skies with people who can't merge their vehicles adequately into freeway traffic (also known as my fellow West Australians), but that's just me. Before we even get to jet propulsion as a means of personal transportation, let's get some other stuff off the drawing board and onto the shelves at BIG W. Most of this may not suit you and where you live, Dear Reader, but it's my blog, so I get to call the shots. SMOOTH TALKING CAR Not like KITT from Knightrider, but a vehicle that psychs you up for meetings and big events with motivational patter uniquely styled for your psychology. Ships with 1000 phrases like: "Mandy, you look smoking hot today and your CV totally kicks ass! Prepare to NAIL this interview, sister!" HAULING OATS On wintry days, this contraption transports a bowl of steaming hot porridge to your bedside to the music ...