Bonfire of the Insanities

Miss me? I'm smashed.

2009-07-05T15:28:14Z

One more drink, preferably an Islay single malt or appellation Chateuneuf du Pape and I'm anyone's. And I'm not even that choosey about the booze. Has anybody got any good TV/movie recommendations for while I sober up?

Anyway, cheers. I'd stand up and drink to your health, but I can't.

uber.

uberjeep @ 2009-07-01T23:00:00

2009-07-01T13:29:47Z

I'm on semester break and I'm bored. Work continues to burrow insidiously like a malignant tumour into all the fun parts of life and the absence of intellectual stimulation makes it harder to ignore. A new generation of antidepressants have been released, most of our patients have been withdrawn from Cymbalta either because of night sweats or because they weren't depressed. A new manager, ten times worse than the last has been promoted sideways and we have quite a good manager at the moment. Unfortunately the command structure is forcing him to have a nervous breakdown. I almost wrote breakdance there. Imagine that, a nervous breakdance. You'd be at a job interview flicking nervously through your notes, pulling at your tie and then think: "Ah fuck it," slip off your loafers and start shakin it. Moonwalking, rolling around on your head. Yeah. Uh huh. M.

So, now that I've deposited the requisite ball of bile, on to the fun stuff. I'm kind of a serial TV watcher in between study and I'm always looking for new shows. At the moment I'm watching Jake 2.0, with my son, Eureka, True Blood and Weeds. Recommendations? I like Shameless but I've watched them all. Great.

I read this really interesting thing about war the other day, looking at demographic theories for war. One of them is that in a population pyramid at certain times you end up with an increase in young men without sufficient positions to sustain them, so there tends to be an increase in recruitment for the defence forces/corresponding incidences of military conflict. It's hypothesised that these disproportionate increases (such as following WW1 when a whole generation of men were killed, leaving an abnormally large group of orphaned kids) has lead to some of the biggest conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries It's called the "youth bulge" theory (I snickered as well). Here's the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_bulge#Youth_bulge

It leads you to wonder what else demographics can come up with. What are the sociological consequences for Western societies with an increase in the number of old ladies? Stone fruit shocks after big scone and jam extravaganzas? Irrelevant. There is a big lockout on private hospital beds though. God help you if you have a motorcycle accident and you need rehab.

I wonder whether a youth bulge leads to a corresponding increase in rock and roll. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Anyway, I've got to go. Got practice to do, half a dozen things to solder together and a winter night to be disgruntled about. God bless you all. Each and every one.

Has anybody got a Demonoid Invite code?

2009-07-01T12:53:09Z

I resisted the temptation to blog about Michael Jackson's autopsy. It was a bit of a personal triumph. He kept telling everybody he was bad and I guess the toxicology reports prove that he was at least very very naughty.

So, has anybody got a demonoid invite code by any chance? Could you pm me if you do?

The Mother of All Funk Chords -- Kutiman

2009-03-10T07:07:38Z

This was so cool, I just had to share it. This guy from Israel took all these obscure dudes playing their instruments in their lounge rooms across the world and mixed them into one funky track.

The Funknecks

2009-03-10T06:49:52Z

uberjeep @ 2009-03-06T03:43:00

2009-03-05T16:30:06Z

Anybody know where uncle salty went? I liked him.

uberjeep @ 2009-03-04T16:57:00

2009-03-04T06:19:48Z

Speaking of not having a functioning pan room, I had the grossest experience about a month ago. We had this manic old lady who was giving everybody else the pip but she seemed to like me okay. Anyway, they'd put her on a fairly strong antibiotic because a lot of manic patients get secondary cellulitis in their legs because they don't rest enough. And the antibiotic was making her nauseous. She rang the buzzer, I came into the room and she was pale faced and I could tell she was about to hurl. So I handed her the wastepaper basket, which was lined with a plastic bag and she emptied the contents of her stomach into it. Which was all fine and dandy, an easily containable mess. I went back to the office to grab the key to the non functioning pan room, some latex gloves and another plastic bag so I could double bag the chunder. Then I went back into the room with my colleague, who dry retched, turned white and left the room at the strong smell of vomit, and took the bag.
"Mmph mph mph mm," she said. I couldn't really understand her at first because she didn't seem to have any teeth.
"I'm sorry," I said. "Could you repeat that?"
"I lost my dentures in there," she said.
So I spent a couple of minutes fishing through her bag of vomit looking for her dentures, smiling to myself. I was smiling because I was feeling nauseous myself and I thought "the only way this situation could get more disgusting is if I vomited on top of her vomit and then had to fish the teeth out of double the vomit."

But it turned out I was wrong. I double bagged it and took the spew into the non functioning pan room, trying to get the key out of my pocket with the clean latex glove I had on my left hand. It was a precarious business, but I got the door unlocked. There was no skip for toxic waste, I just had to leave the bag on the floor. The next morning, I handed over to the nurse in charge and the cleaners that there was a bag of vomit in the pan room and please could they dispose of it.

Anyway, two weeks later, I had to go to the pan room for a similar purpose and SURPRISE! The bag of chuck was still sitting there.

That's why engineering is going to be good for me. I like problem solving and I like working with efficient systems. So any engies who might be reading this, particularly if you work with neural networks and AIs, give me a shout out. I'm only at the early stages of my degree, but when I get to the end of it, I'll sure as hell be leaving here.

Where I'm at.

2009-03-04T05:57:45Z

I just thought if there's anybody still reading, they might be interested to know what I'm doing. I'm currently studying mechatronic engineering and have been singing opera for the last four years. No joke. Engineering is my escape plan.

I'm also trying to sell a manuscript for another author, genre: comic historical romance, word length: 67000 words. If anybody is interested, you can email me at lankyjohn at gmail dot com. It's really witty and good--basically a humorous sequel to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. It's written in the style of the George McDonald Fraser FLASHMAN novels and the author (who is a well established romance author) also has a PhD in Classics so the historical details are accurate. It takes place several months after the events of Pride and Prejudice with the youngest daughter, Lydia, as its morally challenged heroine conscripted as a spy against the French. A series of tawdry adventures follow and Lydia ends up in all sorts of unlikely situations, such as the Battle of Borodino in the ill fated Napoleonic invasion of Russia

I'm still sporadically writing myself but I'm so busy, it doesn't amount to much. The book I'm conceiving is called A CURE FOR THE COMMON COLD and it's about a bipolar stockbroker who single handedly brings the world economy back to the neolithic age. It includes a subplot about his son who fakes his own death in order to make his garage band famous. It's fun. You'll like it. If I ever finish it.

And yes, I am still working nights at the same soul sucking hospital. We have reasonably new management at the moment and they're even worse, if possible, than the previous lot. What is it about middle management jobs in this cynical industry? It's like the Defence Against The Dark Arts position in Harry Potter--even if you're good when you start, you've got one year and then you either die or turn into a werewolf.

The other day the unit manager was telling me that ratios for the plastic triangles we use to count the tablets had changed and we'd have to order new ones from the US. Which is clearly an unmitigated, bald-faced lie. On two counts. First, because the triangles are based on Pascal's triangle, which has been around for about 350 years and has been proven countless times by generations of mathematicians as an accurate way of counting cylindral objects (e.g. tablets) stacked in a triangle. Second, because I rang the local pharmacy and they said they had twenty seven in stock and no they hadn't changed the ratios at all and I could have one that afternoon if I wanted one.

It continually amazes me how this guy can deliver these whoppers straight faced. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he told me that the Newtonian concept of gravity was wrong, he'd just heard it on the news and was adjusting hospital policy accordingly. "We will now be admitting incontinent patients, despite the fact that we don't have a functioning pan room, because it has been clinically proven that their faeces will float into the toilet of its own volition. Yes I'm serious. Yes, look it up. It's on Wikipedia."

Garoova

2008-10-21T16:20:28Z

Check these guys out. Funky D and B outfit from Amsterdam. Garoova. Marc the drummer is a mate--truly inspired player.

Student found porn images on brand new mobile phone

2008-09-17T07:25:44Z

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24359771-15306,00.html

I wonder if this is just the best marketing strategy Dick Smith has ever come up with.

Leaking home movies obviously rejuvenated Pamela Anderson's and Paris Hilton's careers.

Will there be like fifty guys in your local “Dick Smith” going: "just give me a phone, I don't care what sort as long as it's full of hardcore?"

I just googled Dick Smith’s careers website: http://www.wowcareers.com.au/wowcareers/DickSmithElectronics/Home/

It says:

“Your Career Starts Here!

Here at Dick Smith Electronics, we offer a diverse range of career opportunities across all of our brands, and are now welcoming applications online!

Store Positions

We accept general applications across all of our brands.
Current positions exist in our stores – such as Sales Assistant, Dock Assistant and Administration Assistant.
To apply online for a Store Position, click here."

It only mentions these three positions, but obviously there are many others such as "side saddle cowgirl", “the wheelbarrow” and my personal favourite “the clam.”

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

2008-05-27T06:09:41Z

Disappointing.

Deathproof

2008-05-27T06:08:52Z

Tarantino schlock.

Like trying to kill a mouse with a fork; gratuitously violent and ultimately a complete waste of time.

Chapter 2

2008-04-16T09:58:36Z

Autumn congealed into a hard winter of barren psychotic mumblings. I’d only been there two weeks and each morning it became increasingly difficult to roll out of bed and drive thirty miles to face the tedium. I’d arrive bleary eyed but on time for the handover only to find it had already finished. In her haste to leave, Tracy had now taken to simply throwing the drug keys out the window of her car for Don to catch, often as their vehicles passed two or three miles down the road.
“All’s well,” she’d yell. “See you.”

It didn’t matter. There wasn’t much to say. There wasn’t anything to say. After you had read the patients’ notes cover to cover, then exhausted all the trashy five year old magazines in the place, nothing much could really surprise you. Even intricate delusional systems involving plans to repopulate the earth using Water Monkeys became de rigueur after awhile.

The turnover wasn’t very high in that place. It wasn’t like some acute facilities where patients are admitted, stabilized and quickly discharged into the great wild yonder . If you had a patient you didn’t like, you were basically stuck with them until they died or you resigned. You’d mutually work towards these aims until one party achieved something. Weapons of choice: cigarettes, medication, psychological torture.

There were good days and bad days. When I say good, I don’t mean the days possessed any intrinsically desirable or positive attributes. I don’t mean they were productive days. Not to be overly cynical, but even on a good day, the only thing the ward actually produced was a large volume of paperwork. Unless you want to count cigarette butts and flatus—and generally even the most absurdly obsessive statisticians don’t want to do that. No, ‘good’ in this case is a dependent variable that we measured in decibels. Good, in simple terms, meant quiet. You could have a ‘good’ day and be equally bored out of your mind.

I could have done something else, I suppose. But what? Like many young men, I lacked a sense of purpose. I felt some compulsion to show up to work and earn a decent income but other than that I had no unifying aim. After the pills were given out and the morning toilets and showers were all done, I would while away the day spinning around in an office chair, thinking about other careers for myself. I could travel to Italy and learn the secret art of espresso making. Being a barista is a respected profession there. I could invent something like the retractable twin group paper clip, stunning in its simplicity. I could put a patent on it and become a billionaire before I was thirty. Or I could run away and join the merchant navy.

I was just typing ‘merchant navy’ into a search engine when I heard Don approach.
“How big are your fingers?” he asked.
“Big enough,” I said. “I’ve never needed bigger.”
“Great,” he replied. “Then you can give Archie his suppositories.”
“I’d like to help you out there, Don. But technically speaking I’m still the most junior nurse on the unit. I think giving suppositories falls well outside my scope of practice.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of supervision.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask—is Archie any relation to the comic book character of the same name?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just funny to think of that fresh faced fifties cartoon guy ending up as a fat, constipated psych patient in an asylum in the middle of nowhere. Don’t you think that’s kind of funny?”
“Not really,” said Don. “Anyway, about these suppositories. Are you confident you can give them by yourself? I don’t really want to have to write down that you are incapable of carrying out simple nursing tasks on your own.”
“No need to get tetchy, Don,” I said. “I’m going.”
I popped the rocket shaped suppositories out of their blister pack and put them into a little cup. Then I poured a fresh glass of water and took it straight out to where Archie was staring at Days of Our Lives.
“Time for your medication, mate.”
He swallowed them without a second glance, chasing them back with some cold H20. I sauntered back into the office and signed that they’d been given.
“Done,” I said. “Anything else?”
Don had stolen my chair.
“You could make me a cup of tea.”

The feeling of intense ennui wasn’t leavened by Terry’s unselfconscious posturing, although it probably should have been. He took me aside one day for another private work chat.
“After much thought,” he announced pompously. “I’ve decided not to pursue any formal action over your meal cart escapades. No—” he said, raising a forestalling hand. “Don’t thank me. It was your first day after all. You did fuck up and it was entirely your fault, but I don’t see any need to ruin your career over it.”
I probably would have thanked him just to keep the peace, but he was so self congratulatory about the whole thing. Like he was doing me a big favour by not incriminating himself.
I looked at the carpet beneath his feet.
“Hey,” I said. “That stain came out pretty well. What did you use?”
He looked at me warily.
“Was it white vinegar?”
“All right, I can see I’m not going to get you to admit your mistake. But I hope you’ve at least got the good sense to keep quiet about it. At least as far as I’m concerned.”
“What am I going to do?” I replied. “Write a book?”
He laughed.
“I suppose not.”
“Oh, Sybil’s coming in later. So make sure the place is clean and tidy. And try to look professional, okay?”
He stuck his thumb in the pocket of his tight moleskin trousers, one knee out, grinning cockily. It was a striking pose and his managerial air was ruined only slightly by the ridiculous cowboy costume he was wearing. Featuring prominently were an open necked checked shirt and a pair of high gloss maroon elastic sided boots with pointed toes.
“Sybil who?”
“Sybil Crowthorn. The patient advocate. We’ve got some business to discuss. Management stuff. But we’re going out together. You might as well know.”
“I thought you were married.”
“I am. I’m having an affair. People do it, you know.”
“OK.”
“Yeah, it’s starting to get serious. She’s bugging me to take her on a holiday.”
“OK, great.”
“Don’t know how I’m going to hide it from the wife.”
“Me neither. Could you stop telling me this stuff?”
“All right. But when she comes, remember, two’s company, three’s a . . .”
“. . . Prime number? Factor of fifteen?”
“Crowd. Three’s a crowd. Don’t forget.”

He swaggered out and Don swaggered in, a mug of hot tea in his hand. He swilled the contents around like a professional wine taster, then glanced in the bottom of the cup. He started with shock at what he saw.
“A grave omen indeed. Never have I seen a rodent and a ferret together in a cup of Dilmah.”
“I have,” I said. “Once in the community.”
“Right. Well, you can trust me to keep that to myself. I suppose you want to know about the new patient?”
He gestured out the window with a flourish. There, sitting in one of the cleaner microsuede chairs was a small, dense woman, garbed in a brown peasant skirt, bright red yak’s wool sweater and a pair of summery green plastic slip on shower shoes. Quilted mittens covered her hands and a nest of tangled black hair spilled from underneath the hot pink earflaps of a crocheted toboggan cap. She was dressed for a sudden glacial pitch in global climate or a drastic failure of the building’s thermostat.
“Ivona,” said Don.
“How did she get here?” I asked.
“Mail order.”
I think he was expecting more of a reaction. I just reached for the first of four tomelike manilla folders detailing her history with mental health services.

“She’s from Turkmenistan,” said Don. “You ever heard of that?”
“Next to Afghanistan, isn’t it? Central Asia?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Her family were cotton farmers. She was kidnapped and sold into slavery by some human trafficking pimp.”
“Jesus. That sounds like a pretty entrenched delusional system.”
“These aren’t delusions. They’re facts. Apparently. Nobody’s exactly sure how she got here because she’s a pretty unreliable historian.”
I flipped through the notes and found the report of the police Sergeant who first brought her in back in 1993.
“Says here she was listed on a mail order catalogue as a bride.”
“Yeah. It turns out the new husband wasn’t the sharpest blade in the Gillette range. They married and shortly afterwards, when he discovered she had full blown schizoaffective disorder, he dumped her and relocated under a new identity.”
“Some honeymoon. Then what happened?”
“She worked as a prostitute in King’s Cross for awhile, then travelled up and down the East coast of Australia.”
“Doing what?”
“I gather she was just showing up at camp sites and hanging around, bumming food, exchanging sex for accommodation. She couldn’t speak much English. She was accused of stealing, found running around naked at one of these holiday destinations and brought into hospital by the police. They were going to deport her but somehow they established her Australian citizenship. So she’s been in long term residential care ever since. Ten years at least.
“When did she get here?”
“Day before yesterday. She was acting up down in J ward since they took her off her lithium. She’s very paranoid. She’s convinced we’re trying to knock her out so we can steal her organs and sell them on the black market. Not entirely unreasonable given her history. Your mission, and you have to accept it, is to make her feel comfortable enough to take a Valium. Maybe then she will become less paranoid. I’d try it myself, but she doesn’t believe I’m a bona fide member of the nursing staff.

Today Don’s Hawaiian shirt was bright green and so loud it could make a lawnmower cry. It had to be either a running gag or a legitimate stratagem for avoiding patient contact. In any case, he sat there serenely, apparently oblivious to the horrific pall his luminous couture cast across his features. Slave trader? Drug runner? Absolutely. He could have been on the cover of Human Traffick Monthly. It was like a sartorial bumper sticker: If You Can Read This, You’re Too Close.
I took the hint.
“All right. Where’s the Valium?”
“You’ll take it to her?”
“No. This is for me. At least until you find a better second hand store.”

In a facility like that, you have patients you like and patients who don’t necessarily bring out your strengths. Although I may sound unprofessional at times with my casual comments about setting patients alight and pushing them down stairwells, then pissing on them to put them out, I do have a professional code of sorts. I try to suspend my personal prejudices and give them the benefit of the doubt, at least the first time I meet them. No matter how much it makes me grit my teeth. In fact, I’m such a great guy that if the patient is incredibly unwell and I’m convinced they have no control over their behaviour, I have quite a large amount of tolerance for being verbally abused, spat on, physically attacked or drenched with body fluids. I don’t like being unsubtly manipulated but I can cope with it. I do, however, draw the line at having shit thrown at me.

Ivona: I’ll simply describe her dispassionately and you can make up your own mind. She was short with a broad square chin. She had puffy suspicious eyes, flat Slavic features and was tanned to the colour of a stale medium roasted Ethiopian Harrar I drank once in Belgium. Her mouth when she spoke was a grim line and her voice was a warlike yell. On the rare occasions when she smiled, she revealed small brown teeth the colour of a railway toilet. She had black stringy hair, a wizened face, and protruding from her lurid green flip-flops were yellow horned toenails apparently last trimmed before the breakup of the USSR because they still had Turkmenistani soil embedded underneath them. You could tell, because it was green.

“Ivona,” I said, approaching slowly. “Hi. I brought you some sandwiches.”
She sat up stiffly, narrowed her eyes and scratched at her underarm all in the same ungainly movement. She looked at the sandwiches with naked hostility, then back at me without any change in her expression.
“Who are you?”
“Matt. I’m a nurse.”
“Nurse, eh? Hmph. In my country, nurse is woman. You are woman?”
“No. I’m just a regular guy. With some sandwiches for you. Regular old sandwiches.”
I handed them to her. She pulled the plastic triangle apart, peeled the top slice of bread from the sandwich and sniffed the ham cautiously, measuring it for either gamma rays or Rohypnol, I’m not sure which. Her suspicions obviously confirmed, she threw the sandwiches on the floor.
“Hmph,” she said glaring balefully at me. “Hmph.”

Ever tried starting a conversation with somebody who obviously hated your guts? Maybe offer to buy them a drink, see if they’ll soften up a little? Multiply that by a thousand and you’ll have some idea of how difficult it is to establish rapport with a paranoid schizophrenic who believes you’re trying to poison them. Every gambit you try is regarded with suspicion. Your slightest changes of facial expression are viewed as hostile intent. You can’t use humour. Any jokes you make fall absolutely flat and are generally greeted as mockery. It can take a quarter of an hour just to get the patient to speak and the wrong comment at the wrong time can spoil it all.

So I launched into a torrent of innocuous banter, lighthearted conversation about the weather, local sport, her favourite fast food joint (it turned out she didn’t have one), movies and how she liked her tea. I avoided all geopolitical debate and totally ignored the imminent threat of global terrorism. Her suspicious frown gradually eased into something approaching a smile. I was winning her trust, inch by inch.
After much to-ing and fro-ing I decided to close.
“I’ve got some medication I’d like you to take, Ivona. Just something to take the edge off and make things more comfortable for you here.”
I knelt down and handed her a small cup of liquid Valium. Although she was still very guarded, her gaze was a little less hostile now and she took the cup and held it in her hand, considering it seriously for the first time.

Jean-Francois and Anita were watching me from the other armchairs, eyes full of mirth. They whispered to each other. Jean-Francois glanced at Anita meaningfully, but there was no need to cue her.
“Where’s Michael?” she said, looking about, mock furtively.
“In his room, I suppose,” I said without turning around. Fuck. The two stooges. This spelled trouble with a double o.
Ivona bristled.
“He lies, of course,” said Jean-Francois. “Michael is dead. Didn’t you know zat? Ze nurses, zey kill us, with zis poisoned medication and zey bury us in ze flower beds. It’s ze gouvernement’s plan for us.”
Ivona squinted.
“That’s not true,” said Anita. She bit her lip, but her eyes were shining.
“Isn’t it? Tell me, the last time you went into the gardens, were ze flowers not bright? Was ze soil not freshly turned? Ze beds smelling rich and mulchy? Zey are killing us, one by one. Mark my words. Oh, how I hate zem for what zey have done to me.”
He looked despairingly out the window, running a finger under his eye.
Ivona took aim and threw the valium.
The fruity smelling liquid splashed against my face, clinging to my eyelashes. I got to my feet and wiped the syrup from my cheeks, trying to salvage some dignity from the situation. Anita squealed with merry laughter.
“Well then,” I said. “Perhaps another time.”

I didn’t know it then, but the last thing I could have possibly wanted was to get Ivona to relax her inhibitions. There was something of the Mongol in her. I don’t mean she was developmentally disabled , although there was probably an element of that, too. More Mongol in the sense that she had a fierce mercurial temper, a shrill, bloodcurling war cry and an unfortunate habit of whipping off her top and running screaming around the unit and beating on her withered chest with her balled fists. She could have equally been a mail order warlord but the market wasn’t ready. No-one was ready for Ivona. Not her ex-husband, not mental health services, not the community. Certainly not Anita as she leapt out of her chair and fastened both hands around the younger woman’s throat.
“WHO DO YOU WORK FOR?!” she screamed. “WHO?!”
Anita was looking genuinely alarmed now.
“Get off!” she shrieked.
Ivona slapped her across the face, a mean glint in her eye.
“GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!”
“What?” Anita asked, gibbering.
“GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING MONEY, BITCH!”
I grabbed Ivona’s sweater and pulled her back. Things were going swimmingly.
“Any more out of you and it’s straight to seclusion. And you—Anita—well really, you asked for it, so pipe down.”
They both mooched off, hating me quietly.

On the other hand, I seemed to be making a friend of Michael. At least I think he was making friendly overtures, but his mood was so volatile it was hard to tell. He was always pleasant initially but it didn’t take long for the luster to wear off.
“How are you?” he’d greet me warmly. “You keyholding cunt.”
“Fine, thanks.”
“You should be fine on your fucking salary, sitting in there drinking coffee with your arsehole mates. See the footy on the weekend?”
“Missed it.”
“It was a fucking priceless game. Two goals scored in the last two minutes. You would have loved it. If you weren’t such a prize wanker.”
He looked at me expectantly, maybe waiting for a retort, or at the very least a denial. I couldn’t think of anything.
“These are the highlights,” he explained, gesturing at the TV set which was enclosed in a bulletproof cabinet, just in case somebody decided to spray it with an Uzi.
“Hmm,” I said. “Looks like a nice shiny ball.”
“You really have no clue, do you? I’ll try to explain. That’s the—hey!”
Ivona had stepped in front of the TV screen. She wore a gap toothed smile and very little else.
“Hey!” shouted Michael. “What about the footy? I was watching that! Are you insane or something?”
I thought she probably was, but refrained from comment as I had noticed a small, brown, apparently innocuous lump of stuff in Ivona’s hand. I was hoping she didn’t have any immediate plans for it. But she did.
Her smile widening, she threw the object straight at me. I ducked instinctively and it struck Michael smack in his indignant face. The small, brown, apparently innocuous lump of stuff was actually a small brown turd. It left a smeary mark on his cheek, then fell in his lap. He stared at it for a second then—well, let’s just say I’ve never seen anybody get out of a chair that fast.

Needless to say Ivona went straight to seclusion, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Don was grinning all the way, having watched the whole scene from the comfort of the office. We gave her a nice cheesecloth nightdress to preserve any dignity that she may by some small chance have still possessed and shut the door.
Throughout the week her behaviour worsened, if that was even possible. She finally took some Valium but far from settling her, it only seemed to relax the few inhibitions she had left. She went from throwing faeces to stealing her copatients’ clothes and lighting them. Her room was a hebephrenic mélange of stolen items and soiled linen—cleaning staff were refusing to go in there. At dinner she was in a frenzy. She forced as much food in her mouth as she possibly could, to the point where she made a hacking sound and vomited it splat back onto the plate. When he complained about this behaviour, she threw a plate of rice and chicken chow mein at Jean Francois and then leapt up on the table and peed in his pea and ham soup . She was in and out of the seclusion room seven or eight times a day for attacking her copatients or soliciting sex from Archie and as well as being absolutely primevally gross, she was so incredibly loud. Don sent me into the day room once to see if there was anything I could do to get her to shut up but I refused point blank. There was way too much gratuitous retard sex going on in there.
“I can’t go in there, Don,” I said obstinately. “I just can’t.”
“Why not?” he asked, irritated.
“Because I want to be able to keep making love to my girlfriend.”

He didn’t make me do it. He knew where I was coming from. We decided to call a case conference. Patients were often bounced from service to service when they were acting out this badly, but this was the last stop. There wasn’t anybody else who would have her. Don rang up to enquire about it, but the detention centres wouldn’t even take Ivona. Since therapeutic measures seemed to be completely unworkable, the only way we could keep her here was to drug her until she was so ataxic she couldn’t walk without falling over. Then introduce her to the blissful regularity of the Bold and the Beautiful. Like Archie, another of our success stories.

Just prior to the case conference, Sybil, the patient advocate finally heaved her vast pinstriped bulk into the office, puffing slightly. Her hair was big and silky blonde, layered and fortified with product until it was more machine than man now. It looked like the work of a hundred-dollar-an-hour stylist, or possibly our groundsman with a lawnmower and a bottle of Roundup. Twin can openers dangled from her ears, swinging dangerously close to her jugular. Every toss of her head put her in mortal peril and she didn’t even know it. Her eyes were pebbles.
“Well, he-looo,” said Terry, his voice suddenly low and sensuous. He smoothed back his hair with the palm of his hand.
“I have no time for that today,” said Sybil primly. “I’m here to report a serious infraction of the rules. A rape.”
“Anita?” said Don from the computer.
“So, you know all about that case then? Hardly surprising. No. I don’t mean a physical rape. I’m talking about an attack on the spirit. A violation of this woman’s civil rights by the insensitive custodians of this patriarchal hegemony.”
“May I say,” said Terry. “That you are looking absolutely beautiful today.”
“I have received,” she said. “An anonymous phone call informing me that one of your patients is right now languishing in the seclusion room. That is, she has been unfairly secluded against her will.”
“All of them have at one time or another,” said Terry. “Who is it?”
“Ivona,” I said.
“Who made the anonymous call?” asked Don. An old trick, but a good one. Sybil wasn’t going to fall for it though.
“I refuse to reveal my sources,” she snapped. “But I want something done about it. Now.”
“What would you like done?” asked Terry.
For fuck’s sake Terry. Make the leap.
“She wants you to take her on an outback tour,” I said lightly.
“She wants you to let Ivona out of seclusion,” said Don at exactly the same moment. He was right of course. I don’t know why I didn’t see it straight away.
“That’s correct,” said Sybil. “In this day and age, there is no need for barbaric backwoods interventions like seclusion. The patient should be allowed to roam freely as she pleases. Especially since it’s pure bigotry that got her in there. Isn’t that right, Mr Black?”
She turned her thickly made up, but nevertheless beady eyes on me.
“Discriminating against a patient on the basis of her gender? Decided to punish her because she refused to watch the country’s favourite male dominated sport?”
“I decided to seclude her because she threw a turd at one of her co-patients, Ms—I didn’t catch your name.”
“Really?” she said. “I have it on good authority that you dragged her naked and screaming into a seclusion room an hour ago. It’s Crowthorn, by the way. Sybil Crowthorn. Public trustee. Patient advocate.”
Don and I exchanged glances. This wasn’t good.
Terry was useless of course. He had been playing Solitaire in his office again and probaly had no idea of the hell Ivona had put us through that morning. He fixed me with a punitive stare. Was that a spark of satisfaction dancing drunkenly behind his stupid, stupid eyes?
“I’ll deal with this immediately, Sybil,” he said. “My oath, I will.”
“Of course you will, Terry,” she smarmed. “So, do you have anything to say for yourself, Mr Black? Or would you prefer that I just throw the book at you?”
I let out a bored sigh.
“Those are very serious earrings, Ms Crowthorn. I hope you can back them up.”

A couple of minutes later we were standing in front of the seclusion room, looking in the window. Ivona sat in the far corner, dressed in the modest cheesecloth night dress I had thoughtfully provided when I secluded her earlier.
“How are they treating you?” asked Sybil, in a syrupy voice full of concern.
“I want to go home!” said Ivona, tears beginning to well in her eyes. I probably would have fallen for it myself if I hadn’t remembered that forty five minutes before she had her hands wrapped around her co-patient’s throat, squeezing the breath out of her while probably wearing her underwear.
“Let her out,” ordered Sybil.
“Yes,” said Terry. “Open the door, Don.”
“Fine,” said Don. “She needs to see the doctor pretty soon anyway.
“Not out of seclusion,” said Sybil. “Out of hospital. The poor woman. After all she’s been through, locking her up in a place like this. It’s inhumane.”
“What makes you think tossing her out on the street while she’s actively psychotic is going to do her any favours?” I interjected, starting to get annoyed now. “Maybe you should talk to the psychiatrist about this before you make any hasty decisions. That’s why we have case conferences, so everybody can make sure it’s the psychiatrist’s decision that the coroner’s court will take issue with.
“Nonsense!” said Sybil. “It’s not up to him!”
“It’s not up to him,” echoed Terry. “It’s a management decision. I’m management, therefore I’ll make the decision. Let her out, Don. Get her things. She’s a free woman.”
“Put it in writing,” said Don.
Terry shrugged helplessly at Sybil, who sighed with disapproval.
“Pathetic,” she said. “I don’t know why you tolerate this kind of insubordination from your staff. I’ll talk to Dr Vaidya. Get him on the phone.”
“No need,” came a resonant baritone voice from behind. “I’m already here.”

We arranged our chairs in a four pronged circle . Don sat by the office window to watch the patients. Dr Vaidya got himself comfortable in the office and Terry handed him a cup of tea which he received gratefully. He glanced through the patient’s notes and glanced back at me.
“You’ve had your hands full I see, Matt. Just as well. It would be a shame to waste that brain of yours by not using it.”

Dr Vaidya was a small graying man in his fifties, always immaculately dressed in starched shirt, tie and tweed jacket, no matter what the weather was doing. His voice was rich and mellifluous, bringing to mind clay jars of blackstrap molasses left on a sunny shelf in a warm country kitchen. It was a soothing voice, well suited to mouthing platitudes. Regardless of what it was actually saying, you always heard: “You can go about your business. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.”

In the few weeks I’d been working with Vaidya he hadn’t really impressed me with his stellar abilities as a clinician. He was a likeable fellow, a good talker and a walking encyclopaedia of psychiatry, but he was too lenient and frequently didn’t take advantage of the available information before making clinical decisions. He didn’t seem to have any interest in long term patient management, which was fair enough I suppose. Neither did I, but he was in charge. Vaidya would almost never show up to scheduled multidisciplinary meetings but would blow in for the occasional spontaneous visit to let you know he wouldn’t be available for a whole week. After a brief interview with the patient he would make an arbitrary and often harmful decision, leaving us to clean up the mess.

Despite his calm and self possessed image, there were times when Vaidya’s veneer began to crack. There had been occasions where I had telephoned to get a phone prescription for a patient and heard the ching of slot machines in the background, and there was a rumor circulating that he had been part of an elite card counting clique that had been kicked out of every casino in the United States. One morning I had walked in to the bathroom to find him shaving frantically with a patient’s plastic razor before attending a meeting with the state manager. He made a small gesture with his hand, like a maestro signaling three eight time, and I walked out again, with only vague recollections of why I’d entered in the first place.
Regardless of all of this, he was a consultant psychiatrist and I respected him.

“So,” he said, after closing Ivona’s notes. What is at issue here?”
“Glad you could come,” I said. “We really need some medication for Ivona. She’s becoming unmanageable.”
“This patient needs to be discharged. She’s here against her will,” said Sybil.
“She can’t go,” I said. “She’s been here a week and she’s obviously rampantly psychotic. As it stands the hospital could be held liable if she hurt someone or injured herself. Bottom line is, it’s a bad outcome for her if you send her out in the community this unwell.
“She’s been oppressed all her life!” yelled Sybil. “Why punish her further by incarcerating her? Why drug her senseless to the point where she can’t enjoy her life?”
“We don’t drug them senseless, Sybil,” I said calmly. “We drug them sensible. It’s what we do.”
“You’ve got a smart mouth, Black.”
Dr Vaidya smiled his benevolent smile.
“I can see you two have very different opinions on this.”
“That’s right, Dr Vaidya. I just can’t see how discharging a woman who is that sick is responsible behaviour.”
“Then I propose a compromise. She will not be discharged. And I will prescribe her some medication.”
“Great,” said Don, from the far corner of the room. “What are you going to give her?”
“A test dose of Modecate. ”
Don stifled a laugh.
“A test dose of modecate,” continued Vaidya, looking slightly irritated. “And she will be given day leave until seven o’clock each night. She will then be given some of her money—I assume she is on a disability pension?”
“It’s not much,” said Sybil. “Actually it’s a pittance. Not even enough for a souvlaki.”
“Really?” said Dr Vaidya. “That’s a shame. Well, surely it’s enough at least to see a film from time to time. Something educational. Those Pixar movies are very good.” He chuckled richly, then wiped his eye. “Very funny.”
“Dr Vaidya,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be doing any favours by sending Ivona out on her own, least of all her. She’s been fairly aggressive and stealing—“
“I understand your feelings, Matt,” he smiled. “But this is how I want it to be.”
“OK then.”
I wasn’t going to press the point. There was a time to talk and a time to act and a time for a coffee and I was buggered if I could ever tell the difference. As annoying as she could be, it was going to be a breath of fresh air to get some time away from Ivona. This was a win/win situation as far as I was concerned. Except for the community. They lost. Big time. But who kept score?
Sybil, obviously. She smirked.
I was rankled. I’d have one last shot at the prize.
“If it’s not too much trouble, Dr Vaidya,” I said. “Would you mind at least seeing Ivona first?”
“Saw her in the hall,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve got a plane to catch. Please forward my calls to Dr Saunders until Monday morning. Any problems, just let him know. Goodbye.”
He swept out, leaving me baffled and Sybil quietly jubilant.

Once out, Ivona lost no time in returning to her old ways. Despite her delusions, she was a competent hustler and had no trouble surviving on the street. Each morning she’d leave the ward with two dollars and come back with forty. She quickly found herself a sugar daddy, a slightly perplexed looking tweedy gent in his late forties with a good line of credit and a bad eye for character. She would spend the mornings at home with him, passing on most of the hepatitis alphabet and from about eleven onwards, after sorting through all the trash cans on High Street, she would go down to the local teller machine and stand adjacent to the queue. According to the police and some video surveillance footage she would then spend a couple of hours loudly harassing and verbally abusing customers until they gave her money or she was asked to move along. But that wasn’t her only source of entertainment.

Three days later, on Terry’s orders, I was taking some of the patients on a group outing. Terry’s ‘management decisions’ were lately Sybil’s decisions, as they had been having long boozy lunches and spending the afternoons together. After I had complained that the patients were understimulated on the ward, Sybil had conceived of a plan. All of the sickest patients would be accompanied by one nurse to the location where they could wreak the most havoc. Brilliant.
So against my better judgement, I was walking into a department store with Mathilda, whom you’ll remember from the last chapter as a sixty three year old lady with delusions of grandeur, and Jean-Francois, whom you’ll remember as a prick . Jean-Francois was picking his nose and wiping it on the Manchester, a bored expression on his face. By the time we reached the electrical department his loud snide comments had already irritated me so much I was seriously considering clobbering him to death with an iron. I probably would have plugged it in and turned it on first if it hadn’t been for Mathilda, who was emanating waves of childlike joy. Her face was lit up like a burning truck tire and she blazed with rapt contentment every time we walked past an appliance. She was unwrapping them with her eyes. Just being next to her was to share her joy.

Michael was also present, swearing loudly.
“Look at this fucking telly!” he enthused. “Fifty two inches. That’s bigger than my dick!”
I hid my face in my hand. The only positive thing about this trip was that Archie, Anita, Stephen and Bevan weren’t on it. They remained back at the ward, having an afternoon nap due to Don giving them twice the usual dose of midday medication. He had given them extra because he didn’t want to be disturbed during his afternoon crap, which he always took at work.
“It feels better when I’m getting paid for it,” he had said.
Try it. It does too.

A gaggle of high school kids stood around some kind of demo model console game system. Ivona stood not far away from them, singing under her breath in a strange dialect, half Turkmenistani, half neologisms, apparently having a spirited conversation with herself. With her wild hair and op shop sarong, she looked rather like a disoriented latter day witch clutching a wicker basket. A store security attendant was eyeing her from a discreet distance. One wrong move and POW! He’d strike like an Uzbekistani gerbil (which are actually quite vicious if cornered and will thump their feet on the ground and whistle at snakes). Ivona must have been aware of his readiness to attack, but in her psychotic state she didn’t seem to care, just carried on, humming to herself.

Mathilda, meanwhile, had engaged a gawky, pimply faced sales assistant to help her with her purchases. He fell into the rhythm of his usual sales pitch speech, but she cut him off. The exchange quickly became distorted and amplified as they fed off each other’s enthusiasm. Mathilda’s speech was rapid fire and small, triangular puddles of spit had formed at the corners of her mouth.
“I’ll have fifty of these,” she said, giddily gesturing at a row of stainless steel dishwashers. “Gift wrapped in Polaroid glarefoil and sent to the psychiatric hospital by express courier. Today, thank you.”
Her jaw worked up and down, the muscles in her cheeks pumping rhythmically.
The young man raised his eyebrows excitedly.
“Great!” he enthused. “Anything else? We do a fantastic line of gas cooktops!”
“I’ll take the lot!” she gushed, holding on to the counter for balance.
“Fantastic! How about a food processor to go with that?”
“Give me a hundred and eighty!”
“Terrific! Anything else?”
“A dog, a cat, and a monkey!”
“Fabulous! And how would you like to pay for those?”
Fossicking in her handbag, Mathilda pulled out a half knitted beanie, a wad of Kleenex and a handful of presucked peppermints before she finally found what she was looking for. She took the small book of postage stamps and slapped them down on the counter.
“There you go,” she said, and then added as an afterthought: “They’re legal tender.”
His face fell. Reaching under the desk, he pulled out a calculator, punching in a few numbers.
“I don’t think that’s going to fly.”
“Why not?”
“You have twenty four dollars and thirty five cents worth of stamps there,” he said, trying not to show his disappointment at losing his commission. “Fifty Fisher and Paykel Nautilus dishwashers at six hundred and seventy nine dollars each is thirty three thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars. Plus twenty four cook tops, one hundred and eighty food processors, seven hundred and fifty metres of of gift wrap, fifty metres of cellotape and the lorry hire. Let’s just call it an even quarter million, shall we? Now, how did you say you wanted to pay?”
“Do you have hire purchase?” she asked, popping a peppermint into her mouth happily.
He rubbed his hands together.
“Now we’re talking! Let me get the paperwork for you!”
“Just hang on a second,” I said, but my attention was distracted. Poor, mad, Ivona had chosen just that moment to pull up her dress and flash her growler at the kids. She was greeted by a chorus of groans.
“Poke for a smoke!” she yelled in a thick accent. “Roll up!”

They scattered.
As she lifted the garment to her waist, she dropped her basket and an assortment of tagged clothing fell out. The security guard ran over and pounced, clamping his hand on her wrist. She uttered a stream of nonsense syllables and slapped him across the face hard.
“Do you know this woman?” he said, his red cheeks stinging as he struggled to keep Ivona in check.
“Never seen her, mate,” I said. “But I know who you might try. Sybil Crowthorn. Public trustee. Patient advocate. Here, I’ll write down her mobile number for you. I turned around to grab a pen, but Mathilda was already using it to put the finishing touches on the hire purchase agreement that would sign her disability pension away for the rest of her life. I bleated in protest, but to no avail.

For his part, Jean Francois had used the kerfuffle to start stuffing electrical appliances down the front of his jeans as if there were no tomorrow. He started with three or four mobile phones which fell straight down the leg of his trousers and onto the floor, before moving on to the Playstation controllers, now forgotten by the kids in their fascination with the scene that had unfolded.

Michael, of course, had vanished. He had absconded, this time for good. It was like he was never there. I didn’t see him again for another month, by which time I had changed rotations.

That afternoon Ivona was back in the psych hospital, raising hell. The staff were glum, the remaining patients were glum and somehow Terry had managed to turn around the whole department store fiasco as though it was my fault. Ivona didn’t sleep. Tracy called in sick all that week. Don lost it a couple of times and told Ivona to: “stick her head up her bum and fart.”

If it was hard to come to work before, it was even harder now. I’d sleep poorly, waking up at the crack of dawn and staring at myself in the condensation on the bathroom mirror, debating whether to even bother shaving or just follow Tracy’s example and call in sick. My reflection was a grim mask. All the softness in my face had gone, replaced by hard angular lines and a bleak thousand yard stare. Bags the size of suitcases hung under my eyes. This was intolerable. She had to go. I needed to come up with a plan.

“The way I see it,” I said to Don later as we sat in the office in front of the computer. “We’ve got two options.”
“I’m all ears,” he said.
“Number one: we could kill her.”
It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that Don did not laugh.
“How?” he asked.
“Overdose. Hanging. Steak knife through the face. We’ll make it look like a suicide. It’s the right location for it.”
“But that would reflect badly on us,” said Don.
“True. Which leads me to our second option: get rid of her.”
“What do you mean by that? We can’t transfer her. I’ve tried. No other service will take her.”
“What about her family?”
“They’re in Turkmenistan!”
“Exactly my point. It’s the furthest possible place away from us. Don, look at this.” I opened up a browser window on the computer with a currency conversion applet on it. “She’s on an Australian disability pension. That’s three hundred and fifty dollars a week for the rest of her life. Three hundred and fifty dollars is—“ I typed in the figure. “One million, five hundred thousand, eight hundred and seven Turkmenistan manat! And one litre of gasoline in Turkmenistan costs only three hundred manat! That’s fifty thousand litres of gasoline a week of purchasing power! The whole extended family could live off that!”
“They can’t live off gasoline.”
“Who cares what they live off!” I said, getting excited now. “Fuck them! They’d be rich! And more to the point, she’d be gone. So, are you with me?”
Don looked enthusiastic in spite of himself.
“It sounds good in theory,” he said. “And it might just work. But it’s not me you need to convince. It’s Sybil. She’s the public trustee. She’s got access to the funds.”
“Leave that to me. Just pack Ivona’s bags and we’ll get her out of here.”

A few short minutes later I was on the phone to Sybil.
“As I see it,” I said. “It’s the only way to right the wrong that was committed ten years ago when Ivona was so heartlessly torn from her homeland. We’ll emancipate her from hospital, the whole hegemonic logocentric metanarrative or whatever and the tyranny of her past at the same time! And all through the healing power of song! Look, you’ve got to go for this. It’s hot, it’s fantastic, it’s the thing that’s on the tip of everybody’s tongues at the moment. The family love it, we love it, Ivona loves it. She’ll live like a queen over there, Sybil. Everything will be laid on. Stretch limos, gourmet trash cans, only the best yak’s wool sweaters and a llama shaped swimming pool! And that’s just for starters! Look, I know you and I have had our differences but Ivona wants this. She needs this reunion with her family to heal. So what do you say? Will you spring some of her money for the airfare?”
“Well . . . I’m not sure.”
“Someone would have to escort her. Maybe two people. It would be a business class return airfare to Turkmenistan and two night’s accommodation in one of the country’s most exclusive hotels. All expenses paid. The perfect romantic getaway for you and Terry.”
“That’s supposed to be a secret.”
“Whoops. Well, obviously you could take whomever you want. I just thought Terry might be a good choice.”
A fifteen hour flight across the Pacific in a confined space with a raving lunatic wasn’t my idea of a romantic getaway, but Sybil hadn’t had the same exposure to Ivona that I had. She still thought Ivona was hard-done-by but ultimately salvageable. She would take an unrealistically positive view of this trip, I was sure of it. But Terry knew the truth—it would be fifteen hours of hell. He would hate this when he found out. Sybil would make him go regardless and he wouldn’t even have the excuse that it would make his wife twig to their illicit affair. It was a perfectly legitimate business trip. It almost made me cackle with maniacal glee.
“Hmm,” said Sybil. “It would be good for Ivona’s mental state.”
“Wouldn’t it just?”

It was only a week later that Don and I were kicking back, enjoying the relative peace and quiet of an Ivona-free ward. We were just getting into a game of Grand Prix Challenge on the Playstation I had confiscated from Jean-Francois when the phone rang. It was Terry from Turkmenistan. He was ropable.
“You’ve got a fucking cheek, Black,” he said. “Did you call the family at all?”
“Well I did. But they didn’t seem to speak English. I assumed it was OK to send her because her father just kept saying ‘yes’ the whole time. Actually come to think of it, I’m not sure it was her father. It might have just been the operator.”
“Terrific,” he snarled. “Just terrific. This whole thing was a bust. Fifteen hours of hell and the family don’t want a bar of her. Who do you think arranged the kidnapping in the first place? They won’t touch Ivona with a ten foot pole and they’ve mortgaged their ancestral homelands to buy her a return ticket. As if that wasn’t enough, Sybil’s left me and now I’m stuck in Ashgabat Airport customs alone with Ivona, looking forward to another fun filled flight. We’d be airborne already but we’ve slowed down a bit as she seems to have cached a bottle of Valium tablets in her ass.”
“I thought she might have done that,” I said jovially. “So I took the liberty of calling Ashgabat customs in advance, to inform them of my suspicions.”
Terry was livid with fury. I could hear him spluttering on the other end of the phone.
“Well, bad news, Matt: She’s coming back. And so am I!”

uberjeep @ 2008-04-13T23:37:00

2008-04-13T13:39:22Z

I probably gave the wrong impression in the last post. The Penguin UK/US deal is actually off for the memoirs. Cancelled some time ago, no hard feelings just a difference in what both parties wanted out of the project. So not a cause for congrats, although it's always nice to be congratulated, so keep sending them if you like.

I just wanted to put what I had from the last book out there. I'll put out the other chapter next week.

But I have another project cooking, purely fiction this time and I'm getting quite enthused about it. Apart from enthusiasm, I seem to be actually doing some work as well. It's a long way from completion, but I've got some good contacts from the last one.

Bonfire Chapter 1

2008-04-12T22:41:53Z

This is the first two chapters from the Penguin book. There won't be any legal issues--the deal is done.

(edit:
I mean done as in not happening. i.e. contracts negated. I just thought I'd post the two chaps I finished here so as people could read it.)

CHAPTER 1

The minute I heard the reinforced door click shut behind me, my heart sank. It was more than just nerves, more than just the vaguely ominous feeling you get when you’re trapped in a place with really bad décor and no obvious point of egress. This was genuine trepidation. This place gave me the screaming heebie jeebies. I hated it from the word go.

What kind of choices had I made that had left me inside a maximum security psychiatric ward? Should I tell somebody that there had been a mistake, that I didn’t belong here, that I had to get out? Who would I tell? What difference would it make? I was stuck here whether I liked it or not. And I didn’t like it.

I fucking loathed it, to be honest. The proportions were all wrong. The ceilings were too low, the lights were too bright and the carpet was rank. There was too much yin and not enough yang. It’s not surprising, really. The people who design psychiatric wards are not, as a general rule, art critics, feng shui experts or interior decorators. Secure psychiatric wards are rarely featured on the front cover of interior decorating magazines. For good reason. Their straight, smooth corridors are typically devoid of both decorations and natural sunlight. The swatches used to design their truly awful colour schemes often appear to have been carved from the flesh of the living pastel animal. Rare feature walls are either adorned with third rate art (the type that has been lingering in a government storeroom for two years, waiting for somebody to emancipate or burn it) or body fluids . It can often be difficult to tell one from the other, particularly while psychotic, but the effect is the same—they make you uneasy. They creep you out.

This was a new secure ward, built when the last of the big psych hospitals closed down. It was supposed to accommodate twenty four of the meanest, baddest, most escape prone, most socially dysfunctional patients in the system. It wasn’t built with panoptic vigilance as its guiding principle. It certainly wasn’t built with good taste in mind. No, like all new units, it was built under budget by the lowest bidding contractor.

The sea of fluorescent glare, the soupy carpet and the laminated peach walls did nothing to alleviate the rising string crescendo in my head. But really when I think about it now, it was the two hundred pound ball of acid wash jeans hurtling right at me that actually caused my blood pressure to spike, sent my heart flapping into my mouth like a fish struggling on a hook and made me moan like an abandoned infant at a Romanian Orphanage. A manly moan though, deep and resonant. More a moan of surprise than terror.

Acquired momentum and gravitational force drew the acid wash object inexorably towards the door, but as I mentioned, the door had clicked shut and I was now standing in front of it. Caught by surprise, I had neither the space nor the neuromuscular control to simply step aside.

Newton's third law of motion is applied to collisions between two objects. In a collision between two objects, both experience forces which are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Such forces cause one object to speed up (me) and the other to slow down (the absconding patient). If the colliding objects have unequal mass, they will have unequal accelerations as a result of the contact force.

It’s just physics. I don’t make the rules, but I have to live by them, just like everybody else. There was no fancy Jackie Chan stunt I could pull to get out of this. I couldn’t dodge out of the way like Indiana Jones at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Weighing about the same as this absconding patient meant I had no choice but to slam my head against the door and slide to the ground while he rolled over the top of me, panting heavily.

Fuck, I thought. I just ironed this shirt.

I gripped the guy around the middle with my legs to make sure he didn’t get up, flipped him over and got him in a scissor hold, figuring I’d hold him there until I thought of a better idea. I was just getting up when four bodies leapt on top of us, knocking the remaining breath out of me. At this point I forgot the physics—I couldn’t actually see anything except flailing limbs. Somebody started pulling my shoes off. Slender hands fumbled with the buckle of my belt, twisted at the buttons of my jeans. Oh, great, I thought. Some pileup pervert. I love this place already.
“Get his pants off!” said a female voice, the tone regal and filled with command. Through a gap I saw a hypodermic syringe being drawn up.
“WAIT!” I yelled. “I’M A NURSE.”

—

Several minutes later, my new boss, Terry, was proffering his hand for me to shake. I didn’t return the gesture as I was too busy rebuttoning my pants, but I nodded as he pointed out the various features of the ward. The store room—locked. The tea room—locked. Michael, my friend from the pileup was being dragged kicking and screaming into the seclusion room—now also locked with him inside it. He mooched around in there for awhile occasionally kicking the door and yelling before sinking to his knees and falling asleep on his arms.

“So,” said Terry, after the dust had settled. “Tell me about yourself. Have you been nursing for long?”
Terry was a Limey. I couldn’t place the accent precisely, but it was from the North. He loved to smooth back his hair with the palm of one hand and jingle his keys with the other. The staff called him ‘Remington Steele’ behind his back.
“Started five years ago. Qualified in ’99.”
“General trained?”
“Yeah. Neurosurg and cardiothoracics. I did a three month stint in ICU but decided it wasn’t for me.”
“Why not?”
“Faeces.”
The corners of his mouth twitched up, but he was too professional to smile.
“All right. So why do you want to get into psych nursing?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“Because I’m saving for a Jag.”
His face relaxed into a broad grin.
“Great. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear,” he said. “We don’t need any more bleeding hearts. If I get another fucking philanthropist come through here I’m going to scoop out my own eyes with a dessert spoon.”
“Doesn’t that seem a little drastic, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir. I work for a living. Okay, maybe it is a bit drastic. But I’m telling you, for the record, that what we need here is people who can draw lines.”
“Lines?”
“People who have clear professional boundaries. I don’t want zealots. I’ve no need for nurses who skip meal breaks in order to provide higher quality patient care. It’s a thin line between skipping lunch and letting patients sleep in your living room because they’ve got no other place to stay. But it’s a line.”
I didn’t see this as an inevitable progression at all, but I held my tongue.
“On this ward,” Terry continued. “You see people sitting around telling jokes. They take it easy. When you work on a surgical ward you’re trying to fit in as many linen changes, cannula removals and nasogastric feeds as you possibly can. Psych nurses draw straws for that kind of thing and if they get the short straw, they call the union.”
“Really?”
“Well, not exactly. But you see my point. We’re professional, but you want to keep things relaxed on a psych unit. You don’t want people feeding off your manic energy or your own need for drama. You can afford to kick back because the ward is being well managed and you know exactly what’s going on. And when the shit hits the fan, you’re right where you need to be, understood?”

What an inspiration Terry was. You could tell he was full of concern for his charges, but he was wearing handmade Italian cowboy boots, designer jeans and he wasn’t afraid to run the ward significantly over budget. After all, it wasn’t like he was digging the money out of his own pocket. It was a Sunday when I started, yet here he was, diligently working overtime for double pay because he couldn’t find anybody else. That’s real dedication. You don’t find that in many professions. And he was saving to take his wife on a holiday, which is nice.

He reached into his pocket, gave his keys a jingle. At least I think they were his keys. Then he gestured at his shirt. Black. Western themed. He looked like a country singer—the Garth Brooks of psychiatry. “You see this?” he said. “Egyptian cotton. Five years, mate, and all this could be yours. Just try to be cool and look as if nothing much fazes you and you’ll get along fine.”

We walked into a room that was designed like a fishbowl, reinforced glass windows in a hexagonal shape. Blinding white shafts of morning sunlight beamed in through the glass, but the halogen lights in the office were still blazing. The idea was that you could see where the patients were at all times. Unfortunately the arrangement was reciprocal and they could also stare in at you whenever they felt like it, drooling and grunting. There they were—hunched in arm chairs or knocking on the windows. They looked harmless enough. Unpalatable, but harmless. A slender bearded bloke with scruffy hair walked up to the window and placed his lips on it, blowing hard to expose his uvula. Judging by the lip shaped smears on the window, it was a pretty old joke. I ignored it.
“Jean-Francois,” said Terry, under his breath. “He’s a shit.” Then louder. “So, you’ve met the team?”

The people who had jumped me before were now leaning back innocently in swivel chairs, doing sudokus or reading newspapers. A big guy crunched a piece of peanut butter toast with one hand while he surfed the internet with the other.
“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” I said.
The internet surfer laughed. He spun around on his chair and stood up, a tall man, well over six feet, in his late thirties with brown hair greying at the temples. I immediately noticed his loud Hawaiian shirt, electric blue with orange palm trees. I patted my pocket for my sunglasses but I’d left them at home.
“Nice threads,” he said, with no trace of self consciousness.
I looked down at my own crumpled pale blue shirt. One side of my collar was sticking up and a button had fallen off.
“Thanks,” I said. “I always try to make a good impression.”
He extended a hand. “Don’s my name.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I replied.
“You’ll be working with Don and myself today,” said Terry. “Gus is out on the floor. This is Tracy. She’s just finished the night shift.”
He smoothed back his hair with his left hand, while he jingled his keys with his right.
Tracy noted the coin toss, ignored it and smiled ruefully.
“That was a near miss,” she said. “Michael’s probably going to be asleep for the next twelve hours. Could have been you, lucky guy.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” I replied, rubbing my head. “That’s Michael in the seclusion room then?”
“Yes. He’s actually a really nice boy. Just sniffed a bit too much petrol.”
I stared at her.
“It’s always hard to know how much is too much,” Don quipped, deadpan. “Go on, Trace. Hand over and you can go.”

Handover is an integral part of psychiatric nursing. In a handover, you summarise relevant clinical information about your patients for the staff who are taking over for the next shift. The goal is fast and effective information transfer so you can get out of there and go home. Concise information transfer. I can’t stress enough how important concise handovers are.

Tracy glanced down at her watch, yelped and sprinted for the door.
“Is that the time? Christ, I’ve got to get the kids ready for school.”
“What about the handover?” I bleated after her.
She ran back, gave an exasperated sigh and shoved a bit of paper into my face.
“It’s all here. You know them all anyway, Don. I’ll see you later.”
Don continued to look at her with eyes like pebbles. I had seen that look before. So had Jean-Francois.
“Oh, all right. Jesus.”
Walking over to the whiteboard she pointed sequentially at each of the patients’ names.
“Chronic. Histrionic. Moronic. Gin and Tonic. Tonic Clonic. Hydroponic.” There. That should do it.”
She was out the door before I could ask her any questions. Now that’s concise.

After the very brief handover had finished, we walked out into the day room and Terry introduced me to the patients.
“I always like to get the feel of the ward as soon as I come on,” he enthused. “Just so as I know what I’m dealing with. Now look. We’ve only got one seclusion room and Michael’s in it. So try not to wind anyone up, okay? Because there’s not much we can do if they go off.”
“Okay.”

When you see movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Awakenings you get the impression that asylums are filled with wacky characters who although disabled are really diamonds in the rough. Their stories are always entertaining or tragic and poignant. There is always a sound developmental reason behind their behavioural problems and you are given the impression that if they didn’t get such a raw deal, they would be functional members of society. You are also given the impression that although they are mentally ill, they are all fundamentally humans and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Keep in mind when you’re watching a movie about a psychiatric ward that you’re only seeing the bits Hollywood thought you might find entertaining. Some thoughtful screenwriter has cut out hours and hours of mind-bending tedium for your viewing pleasure.

There is a lot of stigma surrounding the mentally ill and there are some great people with mental illnesses out there. But let’s face it: there are also many mentally ill patients who are a complete waste of oxygen. They don’t deserve your respect at all. They are just evolutionary freaks and predators with all the sexual ethics of sewer rats and they were never going to be useful members of society. They don’t even have entertainment value. Their stories are tragic, but not tragic enough to warrant a mini-series. And they are absolutely mind-numbingly boring to talk to when you can get anything sensible out of them, which is almost never.

Case in point: Archie Lonergan.

Terry let me walk ahead while he stood back a little way. “This is Archie,” he said, pointing to an obese man in an armchair. His mouth moved slowly and soundlessly, plosively chewing the fat with his favourite fictional characters on the television set.
I looked down at Tracy’s notes.
“Chronic schizophrenic,” they read. “Forty-five years old and lived with his elderly mother until he was thirty. Tried to kill her with a letter opener because the voices told him to. Burned out. Occasional command hallucinations. Largely brain damaged. A bit antsy today. Missed his enema last week.”
Archie was wearing a cable knit cardigan and a handlebar moustache, a sign that at least some of the staff had a sense of humour. He didn’t bother to get up—he was entranced in the daytime soaps. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if he could get up. I think his ass was fused to the urine soaked leather.
“Don’t take it personally if he doesn’t say hello,” said Terry. “He’s having difficulty coming to terms with the fact Thorne shot Ridge on the Bold and the Beautiful the other day. It actually happened in 1987 but he just can’t bring himself to believe it’s true.”
“The Bold and the Beautiful, eh?” I asked. “Classic television drama, that.”
“Fuck off,” Archie grunted. His eyes didn’t even move.
“We’d better go,” said Terry. “He gets aggressive.”
“Command hallucinations,” I asked. “What are they?”
“Voices in your head that tell you to do stuff,” said Terry.
“Like what?”
“Like kill people.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do. It’s pretty common around here.”
I didn’t get a chance to clarify what he meant by that. I was destined to find out in due course.

We walked along the hall and out through a hardened glass door into a what Terry liked to call the quadrangle; cracked earth, a few pavers and an assortment of cigarette butts with an easily climbable six foot fence bordering one end. I noted the fence, wondering what the point of it was. Perhaps the state government was planning to train tomatoes on it at some later stage. A sulphur crested cockatoo was biting pieces off the branch of a gum tree and spitting them into the drought bleached grass below. He caught my eye, screeched loudly and rocked from side to side, grey tongue lolling. Behind the wire fence, parked, was the groundskeeper’s golf buggy, three trolleys attached to the back.

“They’re for lunch,” Terry explained. “Empty now, but about twelve o’clock they will be filled up with curried sausages. Always curried sausages on a Sunday.”

Hardly haute cuisine, but less revolting than some of the meals Food Services concocted as I was soon to discover.

“Bev,” said Terry, gesturing at a slight, whiskered man in his late fifties with a line drawing of a sceptre on his upper arm. His mouth was a grim and overly wide. He made a whistling sound as he breathed, which I later realised was the result of a tracheotomy.
“Bevan McKenzie,” read Tracy’s notes. “Mentally subnormal. Fifty-five years old. Chronic schizophrenia. Terminal Ca of the lung. Delusions of grandeur.”
“KING GEORGE,” Bevan pointed at himself and wheezed in a voice ruined from years of smoking fifty cigarettes a day. “KING OF ENGLAND, RULER OF SCOTLAND, PRINCE OF WALES, DUKE OF NEW SOUTH WALES, PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND, FIRST LIEUTENANT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY, GRRR.”
His speech became unintelligible towards the end but he may have finished with ‘Boris Yeltsin’s gay lover.’
“Impressive credentials,” I noted.
“Not really,” said Terry.
I raised an eyebrow. We walked away from the patient.
“George—uh, Bev—has lung cancer,” Terry said quietly. “He’ll be dead before Christmas. Poor guy.”
I found out later that this was overly optimistic. Christmas came and went and Bev was still hale and hearty, if one could ignore the litre of mucus he had to expectorate each morning in order to get his respiratory system fired up. I couldn’t. I don’t want you to think Bev is a main character in these memoirs. He’s more of a backdrop, a revolting bit of scenery that serves to remind us of the ugliness of psychiatric nursing.
Served to remind me anyway. Every hour, on the hour, he would report to the nurses’ station with his co-patients. He’d tap on the window and bark: “SMOKO!” in his gravelly voice.

They say these people are chronically unemployable but surely there’s a market for them as novelty timepieces?

Also sitting on the treated pine bench where Bev was perched was a grandmotherly woman, a shawl across her knees. Her presence seemed incongruent in the ward, which was largely populated by ragged men in opp shop clothes.
“Hello,” she said sweetly. “I’m Mathilda.”
“Hi Mathilda,” I said. “Nice to meet you. Do you come here often?”
“I live here,” she said. “At least until they renovate the Opera House so I can move back in.”
“You must be quite well off to live in the Opera House,” I said. “What is it that you do for a living?”
A merry peal of laughter escaped her lips.
“Oh, I don’t work,” she scoffed. “No. Goodness me, no. No! I own a chain of superstores around the world. Marks and Spencer, you’ve probably heard of them.”
“Yes, I have.”
She smiled and turned to Bev.
“Goodness me, this young man just asked me what I did for a living! I haven’t been asked that in thirty odd years.”
“Hernnh,” Bev grunted, incomprehensibly. He hawked and spat, and all four of us stood gazing at his royal gob of mucus for a while until Terry seemed to gather himself together.
“Imagine that,” she said. “A living! People like us!”
Mathilda’s notes read: “Sixty-three years old. Bipolar disorder. Recovered alcoholic. Ten years ago she destroyed her life in a six month gin soaked manic bender. DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR.” Nice of Tracy to point that out. For a second I thought she actually was a tycoon who lived in the Sydney Opera House. No wonder she got on so well with the King of England.

Back in the day room, we met Stephen, a fatuous looking man in his fifties. He was dressed as a twenty-year-old might have been in tennis shoes, jeans and a t-shirt. I was never exactly sure of Stephen’s diagnosis, but whatever illness he suffered from made him unable to converse as a normal person might. His speech was scripted and he spoke almost entirely in clichés. He and Terry got on like a house on fire.
“How are you today, Steve?” asked Terry.
Steve gave him a grin and a double thumbs up.
Tracy’s notes were scant. “Controlled epileptic retard,” they read. “Paranoid ideation not so evident this shift. Fatuous.”
“Sleep all right?”
“Like a baby.” Stephen extended his thumb again.
“You look well.”
“Good as gold.”
“Well you know what they say, Steve. Beauty is a fading flower. This is my young apprentice. It’s his first day here.” He turned to me. “Go on, talk to him.”
Steve was Terry’s favourite and he presented him like an exceptionally stupid dog for me to pet. Evidently a chat was obligatory, but how do you start a conversation with somebody like that? I couldn’t ask him what he had been doing, because I knew he hadn’t been doing anything apart from watching the soaps every day for the last twenty years. We couldn’t talk about the weather, because like Johnny Cash, he hadn’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when. We couldn’t talk about social events or newspapers because he’d never been invited anywhere and couldn’t read, hence the moniker ‘Controlled Epileptic Retard’. His hobbies were:
1) sitting on his arse; and
2) grinning stupidly; and occasionally
3) salivating slightly.
He didn’t know any other tricks. His seizures were controlled, so no entertainment value there. He couldn’t catch a ball. He couldn’t even fetch. And it would be inappropriate for me to rub his head vigorously, smack him on the back and say: “There’s a good Stevie! Does Stevie want a can of Chump? Does Stevie want a ball bounced off his forehead?”
I’d have to try something he could identify with.
“Did you see Bold and the Beautiful yesterday?” I ventured.
“Yes,” he smiled.
“What did you think of it?”
“Silly as a goose,” he said, incomprehensibly, raising his index finger.

My life floweth away like a river.

I don’t know what happened to Terry at that point. Perhaps Steve’s similes had lulled him into some kind of persistent vegetative state. He just stood there, grinning stupidly, waiting for somebody to institutionalise him. Oh, wait. They already had. He scratched his chin, idly, staring up at the ceiling.
“Shall we go?” I said.
“Just a second. I want to talk to Steve.”
He put his hand in his pocket, jingled his keys again.
I wanted to grab Terry by the shoulders, shake him vigorously and tell him to get a fucking grip. But I didn’t. Not then.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it Steve?”

There was a collective sigh from everybody in the day room, the sound of a tiny atmosphere escaping from a tiny dying planet. Somewhere, deep in space, a star flickered out.

“Oh for God’s sake, can you shut the fuck up?” groaned Anita, a young woman in a robe and a pair of Daffy Duck slippers . “We’re just trying to watch television.”
Terry turned to look at her. Steve seized the moment and without wasting a second, pulled his shoe off and threw it at the back of Terry’s head. When Terry turned back, Stephen held his thumb up, grinning from ear to ear, one holey sock exposed for all the denizens of this particular galaxy to see.
“All right everybody, settle down,” said Terry. He gave his head a brisk rub, found Stephen’s shoe and helped him put it back on.
“What was going through your mind just now when you threw that shoe at my head, Steve?”

Anita wailed. She punched herself in the face three times in swift succession. Tight, hard punches, lots of power. Jab, jab, hook. She could have been a contender.
“Can’t you see,” she said. The last part was almost a scream. “He’s a fucking idiot! There is absolutely no point talking to him! He’s like the funnel web spider of imbeciles—he’ll suck you up and leave you a hollow husk! Then he’ll feed you to his babies!”

Privately I agreed. Publicly I agreed. I was in complete agreement and would have signed and notarized an affidavit to that effect if somebody had put one in front of me. She was talking sense. It was probably the only time I ever heard her talk sense.
I glanced at Tracy’s notes. “Anita Cordwell. Twenty-three years old. Diagnosis: borderline personality disorder. History of deliberate self harm. Brought in by mother three years ago. Since then numerous self-harm and suicide attempts including burning, cutting and overdoses. Picking at scabs on wrist, despite nursing advice to let them heal. Small laceration to left calf. Appears to have been self inflicted with fingernail.”
That was the half of it. Anita knew how to push everybody’s buttons.

Anita had the advocate and the police in here at least three times a week at the beginning of her admission, accusing staff and co-patients of raping her and physically abusing her. There was no evidence of any misconduct and they got bored eventually. She was delusional and psychotic but also malicious. If you told her she couldn’t have an extra cigarette, she’d report you for touching her inappropriately. The only way you could legitimately get revenge on her was to mess with her menu. One of my colleagues had her on pureed cabbage for a year after she accused him of watching her while she got changed.
“Petty, I know,” he said. “But healthier than radioactive isotopes. Definitely healthier than the braised shit on toast we usually get from Food Services.”

I’d spoken to Anita’s mother a few times. She’s a high functioning lady, good job. Well, not that good. She manages a telephone counseling service. She told me she’d initially discovered Anita’s predilection for self harm when she’d refused to attend the sports carnival at school. Apparently Anita couldn’t wear shorts, because she’d carved ‘FAT’ into her thigh in a serif font, which obviously is going to hurt more, especially in 72 point with a blunt razor blade. Anita’s mother was heartbroken about what’s happened to her daughter but carried on, stoically attending care planning meetings and visiting once a week, bringing back modest clothes which are typically then strewn about the floor of Anita’s hebephrenic room in favour of strips of chiffon, fluffy bunny slippers or slinky nighties.

Anita still constantly accuses the staff of indecent conduct towards her. Her voice is high and shrill. Not bandsaw shrill, more melifluous like the sound of the Kee Kee bird that builds its nest in the Kukumbee mountains. (All right, I’m not a naturalist. Or a geographer. But you get the picture; voice shrill. And whiny, did I mention whiny?)

“We’ve talked about you hitting yourself, Anita,” said Terry. “It’s not on.”
“Don’t make me hit myself then. Just stop being such a fucking idiot. You’re like the Emperor of Fucking Idiots right now.”
“Language Anita,” said Terry.
“Language, Anita,” parroted Jean-Francois, inanely.
“Oh shut your Frog gob,” she retorted.

Jean-Francois, a disgruntled looking slim, bearded man in his early thirties was now mooching around in a chair by the window, reading Marcuse and occasionally coming out with meaningless quotes. Not from the book. He was too psychotic to assimilate written information at that point. This was just multilingual word salad. Rhyming sometimes, but lacking any classical form or structure. The poets Pope and Dryden, to pick a couple of names at random, would have hated it. They would have thought it was too open and lacking in sufficient heroic couplets. Shakespeare would have thought it was shit. Coleridge might have liked it.

“In Exopoo I was interred,
Add a fifth, subtract a third,
And now I’m thinking I’m a bird
And all I can do is shit.”

He was like a psychotic French Dr Seuss. It was hard to take.

Tracy’s notes read: “Jean-Francois Gavage. Card-carrying shit. Son of a French diplomat. Marijuana induced psychosis.”
Jean-Francois was an intelligent guy, quite the provocateur, with few if any moral restrictions on who or what he was prepared to sleep with.. I’m sure he had some redeeming qualities but I couldn’t actually be bothered to discover them and he didn’t feel inclined to share them with anyone. I was very polite to him (as I always am to everybody, everywhere) but I spent as little time with him as possible. I just couldn’t seem to get interested.

“Salut, Jean-Francois,” said Terry, inclined his head slightly. “A new staff member for you to meet.”
Jean-Francois stared at me balefully.
“Frotteur,” he said, seemingly enraged. “Espece d’enculeur de cochons!” Pig fucker.
The guy was off the show. There was no way he could carry a conversation.
“That’s French,” beamed Terry. “It means hello.”
“Bonjour is hello,” I replied. “That’s not hello.”
“Leave it to, me, my young ami. Ca va, Jean-Francois?”
“Fils de pute,” said Jean-Francois, his wide smile almost a grimace, insane eyes pleading. « Connard. » Son of a bitch. Wanker.
Uncomprehending of this torrent of abuse, Terry ploughed on in his broken traveller’s French. “Ou est-ce qu’il est, la charcuterie ? Il est laid, ce bebe.” Where is the deli ? This baby is ugly.

“A lot of professionals are crackpots,” Stephen piped up.
“Thanks for that, Steve,” Terry said, ignoring him. “Jean-Francois, j’ai perdu mon chien. Ou est-ce qu’il est? » I lost my dog. Where is he?
« A l’embassade. Il se couche la avec ta mere. » At the embassy. He is sleeping with your mother.
“Bon!” said Terry.

You begin to see now the extent of my mistake. I had fucked around in school to the point where all I could do was empty bedpans or stand around listening to inane conversations between fuckwits. That was all I was trained for. If I spent five years in this job, I could end up like Terry, universally despised by everyone on the ward. Kids, if you’re reading, let this be a lesson to you. Shaking a little, I walked back into the office where Don was spreading out his newspaper.
“What the fuck am I doing here?”
I realized from the smirk on Don’s face that I must have spoken the words aloud.
“Welcome to psychiatric nursing,” he said, glancing at my ashen features. “Ninety-nine percent boredom, one percent fear.”

I plonked myself down in the chair beside him, leafing through a well thumbed copy of Virgil’s Aeneid. Terry came in, looking put out.

“I don’t like you reading books,” he said. “Just so you know. Magazines are okay, but not novels. Understood? We’re here to do a job and that job doesn’t involve reading books.”

I slapped it shut. Terry grabbed a copy of Sports Illustrated off the desk and walked out again, flopping down into a chair in the day room.

“He’s quite the tosser, isn’t he?” said Don. “He loves Steve. Thinks he’s some kind of Peter Sellars type retard, really the messiah underneath. Anyway, never mind. Only eleven and a half hours to go. Here, have the finance section.”

He handed it over. I settled in for a long, boring ride.

—

As it turned out, it didn’t take too long for things to liven up. By midday, things were cooking. Lunch was on its way and Terry, perhaps with the intent of alleviating his own boredom, had quickly succeeded in winding the patients up to the point where they were baying for his blood. Oblivious to the bad feeling he had engendered he had then fallen asleep in his armchair right in front of them. Don and I were watching him occasionally, but with no great concern, until Anita snuck up behind him and started loading something into his open mouth.

“Come on,” said Don. “We’d better go out there before he gets himself killed.”

“Anita,” he said quietly. “What do you think you’re doing? What are those.”

“My tablets,” she said mischievously. “I’ve been saving them.”

“Terry,” said Don softly. “Wake up.”

Anita seemed to sense the dramatic moment slipping from her. Her audience’s attention was wavering. She took action. She improvised.
“I’m tired of you all pushing me around!” she screamed. Then before we could stop her, she turned and ran full pelt against the plexiglass. There was a sickening crunch as her nose broke, but the glass, although smeared with red, was undamaged.
She let out a wail. “Abuse!” she yelled. “I want to file a fucking complaint! I’ll have your fucking registration! Get me the police! I need a fucking lawyer! I want to go to a real hospital! Now!”

All the commotion seemed to have woken Terry up, and he sat bolt upright, swallowing whatever it was that she had put in his mouth.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Don wearily. “Anita, calm down and come into the treatment room. You’re bleeding all over the place.” He turned to me. “You, grab Terry and try to get him to vomit.”

“I can help you with that!” said Mathilda. “I used to be bulimic! It was, I don’t know. Before I took over Miramax, anyway. If you vomit within the first ten minutes it’s easier.”

“There’s some bicarb of soda in the cupboard,” said Don, walking out the door, gripping Anita by the shoulder. “If that doesn’t work, give him charcoal.”

Just at that moment, Archie stood up, eyes blazing, fists swinging. He went right for Steve who scurried for cover behind me. For the second time that day I found myself standing in the eye of the whirlwind. I threw up my hands, managing to take most of his punches on my arms.

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” said Archie, face like an attack submarine

“DON!” I yelled.

“SMOKO!” growled King George in his cancerous baritone. Always good for novelty value, King George. Maybe he thought he was back in Narrandera shearing sheep. Or a young jackaroo in the Northern Territory pausing for a quick fag in between cattle musters (all this occurred prior to his coronation)

Don let go of Anita and took a step towards me. She immediately started banging her face against the door of the office.
“Abuse!” she screamed. She was really making a mess of herself. A cut had opened up above her eye and her face was swollen and puffy. Don grabbed her again, led her off. No help from that quarter. Terry had jumped up from his armchair, green at the gills. He tried to grab Archie’s arm, but Archie was like a man possessed. Terry flew back on the floor, stunned.

“Fuck this,” I thought. I leaned back and punched Archie fair in the face as hard as I could. I expected him to go down like a diving dotcom. But he just stood there, unholy rage burning in his eyes. That’s when I realised I wasn’t dealing with a normal human being. I grabbed one of his arms, wrapped my legs around it and held on for the ride.

“Come on Terry,” I said panting as Archie swung me around like a kid on a Ferris Wheel. “I can’t handle him by myself.”
Terry stood up, shakily and stepped in to grab the other arm. Slowly the flailing subsided. Archie allowed himself to be led into the seclusion room, where Michael lay in slumber on a mattress. Don came jogging out of the office, helped Terry to drag the mattress off the floor and into the main part of the ward, Michael’s incumbent form still upon it.
“Where’s Anita?” said Terry.
“Locked her in the fire cupboard,” said Don.
“Good plan,” said Terry. “Note to self: get more seclusion rooms.”
Tosser. He slammed the door shut and we all turned around.

To find no Michael. Just an empty mattress.

As one we ran to the back door. Michael was a relatively tall and lanky guy and we arrived just in time to see him run full pelt at the fence, put his hands on top of it and vault over it, laughing wildly as he did. The white cockatoo which had been sharpening its beak on the wire flew off, squeaking in protest. Michael squawked back and sprinted across the grass, flapping his arms like wings.

“He’s as fast as a springbok!” said Steve, popping his head up from behind the couch.

“Stay here,” I said, grimly, but I was actually starting to enjoy myself. I leapt over the fence and hijacked the groundsman’s buggy.
It took me about three minutes to get it started, by which time Michael was loping across the grounds, as fleet footed as a gazelle. I could barely see him in the distance. I chugged after him, with two trolleys of curried sausages and a tureen of pea and ham soup attached to the back of the vehicle. The menu was from the 1920s. So was the vehicle judging by the speed at which it went. There was no way I was ever going to catch him but I knew Terry and Don could see me through the window and I wanted to put on a good show.
“STOP!” I yelled, raising my hand in the air. “POLICE!”
When Michael turned around and saw me chasing him in the golf buggy, he laughed so hard he stopped where he was and fell to his knees, pounding the dirt with his fist.

He was still laughing when I walked him back on to the ward and into the seclusion room. Terry wasn’t though.
“Can I see you for a minute?” he said.
I followed him into the nurse manager’s office, a sinking feeling in my stomach. He bumped his computer mouse as he sat down. A game of solitaire flashed up on the screen.
“What was that all about?” he asked. “The patients’ dinner was still attached to the back of that buggy. If you had stacked, you both would have been covered with scalding pea and ham soup. Not to mention all of the patients would have gone hungry. It was a disaster waiting to happen. I thought you had a bit more going for you than that. Have you ever even driven one of those things before?”
“No,” I said sheepishly. “But when I was a kid, sometimes me and my friends used to push each other round and round the car park in supermarket trolleys.”
He didn’t look amused. “So what possessed you to go chasing after a patient on a high powered dune buggy?”
We were obviously talking about different vehicles now. But fuck it, I mean, you either see the funny side of something like that or you don’t.
“It’s just . . . He had too much of a head start,” I improvised. “I never would have caught him . . . on foot.”
“Look, I’m going to have to issue you with an official reprimand. It will go on your file and after twelve months it will be erased. And if anything like this happens again, I’m going to have to recommend you transfer off this ward,” said Terry. “And another thing—”
He broke off suddenly.

His face was white. Beads of sweat were gathering at the corners of his forehead.
“Are you all right, Terry?” I asked voice full of concern.
“Well, now that you mention it, I don’t feel so hot,” he said. He leaned his elbows on his knees and spat on the carpet in front of him, blowing hard. He let out a loud fart at the same time.
“If you vomit within the first ten minutes, it’s easier,” I said, convivially.
“I’m not going to vomit,” he said, making a gargled retching sound. “You can go now.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “I mean, there’s nothing I can get you?”
His breath came in short gasps.
“Just . . . go!”
“Nothing? Not even a glass of water? Cup of milky tea with an arrowroot biscuit in it? Bowl of chunky pea and ham soup? Saucer of curdled dogs’ livers?”
“Go!”
I skipped out the door as the first splash hit his handmade Italian cowboy boots.

Subprime mortgage crisis explained in cartoons

2008-03-31T06:19:21Z

http://tiny.cc/uArLb

Funny. Check it out.

Credit Crunch Haikus

2008-03-29T21:08:54Z

Bear Stearns is fading
It was so profitable
But now it is gone.

Add your own.

uberjeep @ 2008-03-27T04:28:00

2008-03-26T17:22:42Z

Hi,

Is there anybody still out there? I'm doing another book and I need to talk to a hedge fund manager. I could do it by email or skype and I just need to find out what it's like to work in a hedge fund in a global credit crunch.

If anybody is still reading this and you know a good stockbroker or hedge fund manager, please help me out.

Heath Ledger killed by global warming?

2008-02-06T23:41:08Z

According to toxicology reports, large amounts of carbon were found in his body. The autopsy also indicated high serum levels of oxycodone, hydrocodone (Vicodin), diazepam, temazepam, doxylamine and Xanax. So an 'accidental overdose' is the formal verdict, but as you can tell, I'm not convinced.

Fortunately for Sanofi-Aventis, who have their own big problems, Ambien is off the hook on Ledger's death--apparently he had used the controversial sleeping pill last year but it didn't work for him.

So could global warming be the cause? It certainly seems to have been responsible for the extinction of all life on Venus and will ultimately, if you believe the media, be responsible for the deaths of every man, woman and child on planet Earth as well.

Ledger Legend Over

2008-01-23T21:12:20Z

Sadly one of Australia's favourite actors, Heath Legend died yesterday after a long battle with depression. He was found peacefully asleep (when they say asleep, they mean dead) in his New York appartment yesterday morning. The family says it was an accident, zealots say it was Ambien, although other prescription drugs (antidepressants) and a rolled up twenty were found next to the bed. Ambien (a sleeping tablet) allegedly makes you hoot and fart, paint your walls, raid your fridge, drive fast cars and have wild sex while you're on it. Sound good? See your local doctor before it gets taken off the market.

But more about Heath. Celebrities have been asked to opine and John Travolta was quick to comment. "I thought he was extraordinary and had a depth and ability and a sense of humanity that I've never seen on screen ... I really don't like it at all that he's gone."

Nicole Kidman: "What a terrible tragedy," Kidman said through her publicist Wendy Day.

Mel Gibson: Gibson, who played the actor's father in 'The Patriot', states: "I had such great hope for him. He was just taking off, and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss."

All true of course. Heath Ledger's death sucks. But he made some great movies before he carked and now I'm going to rent them all.

Steven Pinker -- The Stuff of Thought

2007-11-13T05:44:12Z

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, is currently promoting his new book: The Stuff of Thought.

One of Pinker’s main research areas is linguistics, and in the talk I watched here -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU – he talks about the different ways in which profanity is used. Why, he asks, when we spill a glass of wine in our laps, do we suddenly switch our topic of conversation towards excretion, fornication or theology? Why are these particular topics censored with such illogical hypocrisy?

He cites one particularly amusing example where Bono, the lead singer from U2, upon accepting a Golden Globe Award on live national TV, uttered the words: “this is really, really fucking brilliant.”

The case ended up at the FCC and they had to decide whether to fine the network for broadcasting the offending word.

They decided not to fine NBC, on the grounds that indecency is “material that describes or depicts sexual or excretory organs or activities” and that the fucking in “fucking brilliant” is “an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.”

Cultural conservatives were enraged and this bill was penned (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:h.r.3687)

House Resolution 3687

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

A BILL

To amend section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, to provide for the punishment of certain profane broadcasts, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 1464 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting `(a)' before `Whoever'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane', used with respect to language, includes the words `shit', `piss', `fuck', `cunt', `asshole', and the phrases `cock sucker', `mother fucker', and `ass hole', compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms).'

Pinker notes that unfortunately the “fucking” in “fucking brilliant” is an adverb and that is the one part of speech that the representative penning the bill forgot to include on his list.

300

2007-05-08T13:15:23Z

In which a group of 300 bloodthirsty male strippers take on an army of mishapen mutants lead by a gay giant. With an overenunciated commentary of cliches delivered by David Wenham.

Gets a big 'don't bother' from me, but then I left, just as the toxic avenger got gangbanged.

uberjeep @ 2007-04-05T17:15:00

2007-04-05T07:20:06Z

One of our national sports stars was recently admitted to a 5-star California rehab center for methamphetamine addiction. The Summit Center in Malibu allocates four staff to each patient and reputedly costs $3000 a day. It has a gourmet chef, spacious suites, spas, saunas, views, everything you’d expect for that kind of cash. Sixty day program, roommate, constant supervision.

Despite the luxury, that would be an extremely difficult job, I think. It’s hard enough ministering care to our local drug addicted prima donnas without them slapping civil suits on you. In that environment, it would be impossible to really set limits.

Imagine being the chef, whipping up an ostrich egg tartlet with confit onions and having it thrown back in your face.
“I ordered the diet foie gras you ignorant cretin! Do you think my liver needs any more of a workout?”
Just telling a patient that a certain treatment wouldn't be in their best interests would be such a source of conflict. I wonder what their staff turnover is like?

I don’t think they have nurses there. Doesn’t look like it from their website. They’re all internists or toxicologists. Nothing but the best. Good luck to them.

It must be really hard to get people off drugs without challenging their belief that they’re at the center of the universe.

Revenge

2007-03-12T18:53:11Z

I started a new community over at http://community.livejournal.com/servecold/

This is the blurb:

This community is for people who want revenge. Jealous spouses, spurned lovers, kids with sand kicked in their faces one too many times. Tell us who you are, what they did to you and why you want revenge.

Be the first to post in it.

Welcome to Groundhog Day

2007-03-06T14:41:45Z

Michael Microdot emerges from his room, one hand on his walking frame, other hand behind him, one digit stuck in his date hole up to the first knuckle.
"I haven't been for days! It's all hard!" he says.
I give him a laxative and tell him to wash his hands. "See, you're making progress," I say. "Two weeks ago you thought your anus was a microdot. Now you can get a finger up there. When you can get your finger out, it's time for discharge."

That's job satisfaction. Being able to watch somebody make progress like that, step by step, inch by inch until they've wedged their whole hand irrevocably up their ass. It gives you such a glowing feeling of pride and accomplishment.

I recommend it wholeheartedly. Especially since I know the laxative won't take effect for another ten hours, give or take. By which time the day staff will be here and I'll be long gone.

He thinks I'm stealing time from him as well. Each time I do a round he asks me: "What time is it?" and when I answer he says: "No, really. Tell the truth now."
I tried showing him my watch, but there's no logic or rationality to this. Every interaction I have with him is the same, plus or minus a few delusional details.
Maybe he's on to something. Maybe we are stuck in a wormhole. I mean, I know he is, but me as well.

Sometimes I just pray for somebody to die, just to liven things up.