20.
.
THE END.
Hello. For all you people who actually do read this?
You haven’t done a good enough job of spreading the word and getting me readers, and I don’t think I can tell anymore people without sounding psychotic, and it all feels a bit hopeless so I’m out.

Thanks for those of you who did enjoy it.
Remember:
Watch Lost.
Love Music.
Take care of your kids.
Don’t litter.
Be kind.
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19.

.

IT'S JUST (AAAH) A LITTLE CRUSH (CRUSH).

Another week in paradise. I made a vow to myself to start going out more and make some new friends around this place. However, "going out" around here pretty much involves only one pub.

Where "busy" in the afternoon means four or five customers. Much like my workplace actually, but I digress. Quite often the local homo publican is sitting around with a few homo friends, usually old men, who have all decided that I'm a choice piece of ass (literally) and gush over me embarassingly. I know I sound conceited when I say this, but what can I say, It's true. This is uncomfortable for many reasons - not least of which is the fact that they're all ugly and old and completely out of MY league (hehe).

Secondly - and I can't believe what's happened as I write this but I'll get there in a sec - I have a ridiculously schoolboyish crush on the barmaid. I find myself going there more and more often just to see if she's there. And even when she is, I can't talk to her much. This was made especially awkward after last week when my cousin's father-in-law and I were at the bar having a drink. Because he's there Often, he knows them all quite well. When I had a chance, I asked him if said barmaid was single. "Yeah, she's just broken up with her boyfriend, why, are you interested in her?"

"Hell yes."

"HEY! BARMAID!* (not her real name) MAD SCORPION'S INTERESTED IN YOU."

At this point everyone in range, including all three of the other bar staff, stop and stare, and said barmaid goes red. I can literally feel any chance I may have had come crumbling down around me. The other guy behind the bar just looks at me - we are both thinking the same thing. If there was ever going to be a game, it's Game Over.

"Gee. Cheers Tim. Thanks... thanks.. heaps."

It's all in good fun. Slash slightly mortifying.

Hence, I've been going in more since that day a week ago, just so the both of us are forced to get over the embarassment.

But, gentle readers, the amazing thing I can't believe as I type this, is that said Barmaid has walked into the library and sat down just in front of me the minute I started to write this story...

Right This Second she is sitting her gorgeous self down on the couch while I try to smother the grin that won't go away and pretend I'm NOT writing about her... This is especially weird as I have NEVER, not once, Ever seen her in the library before. Hmm, the universe might just be working for me here. I have asked it for a nudge, and I have been very, VERY positively visualising her lately...

The problem is, you never quite know, when you're a patron and they're a Paid Employee, wether they really do like you, or they're just being nice 'cause they have to. I'd better start stalking her. And visualising us drunk together at a party...

I really should grow some balls and just talk to her now while we're in a tad less public glare. Although it is really quiet in here today and I don't fancy whispering to her. That would just be creepy. Dang, she really is hot. No, I'm going to have to take my time on this one.

Wow, she's even got pink toenails...

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LOST:

Lost is back, Lost is back, Lost is back, SO excited, SO excited, SO excited.

Looks like the gimmick for this season is not flashbacks, not flashforwards, but flash sideways - alternative timelines goin on. I like I like I like!

.

DOCTOR WHO - DEAD TIMES TEN:

David Tennant's Tenth Doctor died on New Zealand television screens this week. I liked this Doctor alot, but to be honest, his last adventure was so milked for everything it was worth - everybody's facial expressions were taut and emphasised, the dialogue was deep fried cheese pizza (thanks Greg), and the sweeping BBC Orchestral soundtrack didn't help matters. It was so over-the-top on every level, that by the end, I was praying for him to die. 'Hurry up and get on with it'. It was good to see poor poor dumbed-down Donna and poor poor pre-Doctor adventures Rose again though.

I'm looking forward to Eleventh Doctor adventures. And I'm especially looking forward to seeing how they plan to get around his supposedly final thirteenth regeneration so they can carry on the franchise. There's no way they'll kill Doctor Who for good... will they???

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THE SIMPLE PHOTO UPLOADER ON FACEBOOK:

Ugh. Hating it.

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MY COUSIN RENATA:

My cousin Renata and I are two weeks apart in age. We - and I mean All of us as cousins - are a tight knit bunch, and Renata and I refer to ourselves as the Middle-Men. This is in reference to our place on the age scale. There were Two Waves of us cousins, and we are in the middle of the first wave. He lives in Sydney these days and was home recently over the festive season. We always have a great time when he's back, and it always sucks arse when he leaves.

Anyway, Ren had a heart attack last week whilst palying rugby. He actually died for four minutes on the field, but they managed to resuscitate him. He died again twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. It turns out that Ren, who is one of the fittest of the ALL of us, who doesn't smoke, who keeps fit, who plays sports, who lives a relatively healthy lifestyle (much more so than say, for example, Me) had two blocked arteries. At 32! He gets out of hospital today, a week after the incident, and is off work for a month while he does rehab...

This news rattled us all to the core. Not least because Renata was the least likely candidate for one of us to drop dead - we have asthmatics and dieabetes sufferers, who BOTH smoke and drink alot. For a brief moment in time we had to consider the possibility that Renata was almost no longer with us. I can tell you now that probably my entire family would have fallen apart at this shock. And that's 60 odd people out for the count whilst trying to organise a tangi for hundreds more.

At this age we get paranoid about other people dying, particularly our children, or our parents. Unless they're sick, we hardly ever face the possibility that one of our peers, someone our own age, might not be around anymore.

I can only imagine what a mortality check it was for Renata.

I'm (for want of a better word) dying to see if he had an afterlife experience. Hopefully his uncle, or our one and only dead cousin, kicked his ass and told him to get back down here cause it wasn't his time yet.

It's cheese pizza, but lets take a moment to be grateful for our lives, and the lives of our treasured. Aaaaaw.

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18.
.
Wow. What a slow few weeks I’ve been having. I feel sorry for anyone reading this drivel. Which, I’ve realised, isn’t many. Hence, The Mad Scorpion will be stopping at number 20.
There. You’ve been forewarned.
Besides, there’s really only so long I can talk about my cousins shed parties every weekend. Or what tv show I watched this week. Isn’t there? God, even I’m bored. If I was watching me on TV, I’d have switched me over months ago.
So I guess I’d better try and say something profound in these last few weeks….
…
..
.
Yeah, I got nothing.
.
Sometimes, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here, and other times I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. As slow and boring as this town is, the people in it continue to fascinate me. For all the Right reasons, I might add. Mostly.
I have encountered so many characters here. The raving homos who run the oldest pub in town are but a speck in the landscape. My whanau take up maybe a fiftieth of the whole picture. Everyone I meet continues to be a complete individual. With adventures and experiences under their belt that, while not completely out of the ball park (especially in my chain of friends) are still pretty amazing.
People my own age and lower own houses. Run businesses. Have two or three kids. Go diving in weekends. Play sports.
I’m concerned that my life is not filled enough… stuff.
I’m concerned that I’m unable to, either physically or financially, do the stuff I want to.
I’m concerned this it for me.
I’m concerned that sooner or later, I will BE the crazy but harmless loner I live next door to.
Only possibly hunchbacked.

I was told by my psuedo-aunt the other day:

"If you fail to plan, then you're planning to fail"...

This is Deeply Unsettling.

How exactly do you plan to be a soap opera writer other than by writing soap operas???

Methinks I need to start stalking some soap opera writers. Perhaps kill them, then wear their skin to work??
.
DEAD TATTOOS:
Ok, get this.
A grieving New Plymouth mother is pissed because the Public Trust Fund Office hadn’t informed her of a special request in her son’s will before he was cremated.
Said Special Request was that the son’s tattoos be removed from him and preserved.
All fair enough so far. I’d be pretty pissed too if I found it out after my son had been cremated.
But then you read what his tattoos actually were:
A playboy bunny.
An Aries sign,
A Taurus sign,
And a DB Export Beer logo.
And yet all I can think is… Thank Fuck his mother didn’t find his will in time.
I mean, come on. What an utterly tacky legacy.
Mind you, for New Plymouth, it all fits…
.
THE GREAT GATE DEBATE:
In Masterton, at the Queen Elizabeth Park, there have been problems afoot.
A gateway known as the Hosking Gates were recently moved from the north to the south end of the park, at a substantial cost to ratepayers, only the gates were left unaligned.
A front page debate in the Wairarapa Times-Age has been raging for weeks – Who oversaw the project, What was going to be done about it, When were they going to be fixed, Where were the people responsible, Why were the gates unaligned, How were they allowed to be moved in the first place, … Etcetera, etcetera.
It was, of course, front page news last week, when at long last the gates were realigned, for free no less, by a generous crane company. Hoorah! Ratepayers could rest at last!
…Or could they?
In a truly stunning affirmation that in small towns just about anything can appear on the front page of the paper that day if nothing happening happens to be actual news, this was the front page headline of the weekend Wairarapa Times Age edition:
“GATE DEBATE: NEW TWIST:
SHOULD THEY BE KEPT OPEN OR SHUT?”
…
.
DINNER WITH SARAH:
Last week I had the pleasure of meeting up with an old friend for dinner.
Her name is Sarah King, and I went to high school with her, and for a while we lived across the road from each other in Wellington, and times between us have pretty much always been great.
So it stood to reason that when we met up for dinner, it was pretty much a laugh fest, and I really enjoyed seeing her. It was especially nice because lately I’ve really felt like all my teenage-hood friendships have been disappearing into the ether faster than you can say “Let’s go park up at McDonalds.”
In the soap opera that I wrote for years and years during my teens and beyond, the character of Sarah was pretty much a teenaged version of Kimberly from Melrose Place, times ten, and also had a psychotic older sister. It wasn’t pleasant when I had to tell her that her character had been cut from the new rewrite I am working on, but I’ve figured with a psycho like that, Sarah will eventually be written back in.
As will Lucy… and Julie… and Janine… and Melissa… and Olivia…
Hey, I’ve had to be ruthless.
ANYway, Sarah praised The Mad Scorpion. Long time fan, she called herself.
When I told her about my decision to end it, she was not at all impressed, and asked why. I told her because fuck all people read it.

She didn't care about that, and felt that it (this blog) was like keeping in touch with me, without actually having to! Like talking on the phone, without actually having to do the pesky 'talking' half of the conversation.

She urged me to continue...
And so I shall. It seems a little arm twisting was all it took.
Even if I’m just writing to Sarah once a week, that’s ok with me.
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RANDOM FACTOID:

My favourite number is 18.

It makes sense to publish this post in my favourite colour.