Thread: The book, An introduction

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

and the jaffle guy get the jam jaffle you take the condensed jam from a 10 man ration pack and you start making a jaffle with that as the filling now this stuff is great because its liquid as it heats up the steam coming out of it softens the bread and stops it from burning so you can heat it up to about the temperature of Lava without burning the jaffle. Then you let it sit for a minute and pass it over an open flame, this dries the bread on the out side and makes it look like a normal jaffle and given a minute the bread cools down and being insulative keeps the filling roasting hot... yeah you know where this is going dont you.... on his first bite he's going to swear hes just taken a bite out of a volcano and as it usually explodes out of the jaffle and gets down the sleeve and front of the shirt then sticks like napalm you get some wonderful seconday effect.

.

AAhhhh good ol 'Napalm Jaffles'. Have been used to great affect.

yes its that time again, one of those posts where I get to give you a little insight into the way I think that will help you work out why I do some of the things I do and some of the things I say, Relax. It'll be fun.

Now I'm a big believer in the fact that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him to fish youve fed him for life. Now in and of itself thats pretty good but peel back a layer and theres a second realism to the conditions for the reasoning of the situation IF you teach him to fish he wont come back to bother you again because a, he will be too busy catching them himself and b, if hes got more brains that the bait then he wont come and ask you because you didnt give him what he wanted the first time so he'll go get some other sap.

Now Im fairly open and live my life by the mantra of "help everyone who asks and make sure everyone gets the chance to ask" but some people leave me thinking along the lines of "I dont care if you go away becuase your taking advantage of what Ive tried to teach you or because you dont want to learn and want to sponge off of some sap just so long as you stop coming and pestering me" this is going to eventually get to a tale about one of those people.

I should mention that when you ask me a question I dont ever want to give you the answer, If its something critical thats got to be done 20 seconds ago then Im fine with that but if its something general like "how does this work" or "why did that break" perhaps "why is that doing that" then I definately dont want to give you the answer. I want you to work it out for yourself, my father did it to me and yes I know its annoying to have some one ask you 3 million questions when you know that they know the answer and it will only take them 30 seconds to give it to you so you can go get on with your life. Heres the thing with just giving the answer tho, its like giving a man a fish, Hell be back and if the person doing the giving is happy to keep doing that then thats all good. but lets look at the long term. No-one lives forever and what happens to the guy whose been made dependant on the bloke giving him fish when the bloke who gives the fish dies? Pretty stark isnt it.

I never realised that Id cottoned onto this till I was well and truely entrenched into the ADF but even now I can distinctly remember a time when I was about 12 when I was already peeved with mum and dad (probabley over something like them not buying me the new multi bot transformer toys or something) instead of just running off to mum or dad when I couldnt get something to do something right I thought about it for a minute and realised that it was mechanical so mum wouldnt know and If I went and asked Dad he was just going to ask me a million questions and not actually help me because it just wasted my time and didnt give me an answer I didnt already know. Hang on I already know the answer I just have to work it out...


Clever bloke my old man... Gave me the complete cruds sometimes but looking back on it is like trying to tune in a weak AM radio station in a car frustrated you'll try and try ,try and try and then all of a sudden you'll crest a slight hill and it comes on strong and clear.

so on with the salesman.

I was working on the front fence today and while doing some part of it I noticed a bloke carrying a briefcase in a suit going door to door at the houses where someone appeared to be home the kind of look that just screams "IM A SALESMAN"

the neighbbours werent home and sure enough its my turn.. Now to be fair while I like messing with people I do like to give them an easy out so without looking up from my work when I saw his nice shiney shoes in my perephial vision I had the line ready I was waiting, Guys in blinds are never as ready as I was. I dropped a modified line out of firefly, one of Summer Glaus (River Tam in the show) "Just keeeeep walkin Salesman" (she said preacher but hey near enough right and Yes Im a big fan of firefly and serenity) Classic me, blunt and too the point. Clearly someones english skills werent up to speed and given that this bloke was of indian origin and had more accent than a nazi in a cheap c grade movie Im tipping it wasnt on my side of the conversation.

"excuse me sir, may I have a moment of your time" Oh goody...

"Im kinda busy buddy"

"It wont take long"

welllll now Im sure he was thinking that it wasnt going to take long because if he didnt think he was going to make a sale hed cut bait and run. I had other plans, Id been working I was due a break and Con had offered to make a coffee about 10 minutes earlier and I was feeling like being obtuse..

"Honey can I get that coffee?, Tell ya what mate Im due a break you could do with one too lets have your spiel" and I delivered that sans punctuation and with each letter backed up about 3 pixles into the letter before it and got the inevitable " Im sorry sir I dont understand" 30 seconds into it and I was already wasting this guys time and I hadnt even gotten warmed up...

I dont even remember what the hell he was trying to sell me but I used all the following to slow down his sale

"sorry mate, just gotta go grb the coffee, no dont come in, dont want the dogs stirred up, I'll be right back"......."now what were you saying, sorry got distracted Its a bit hot, Im a little dehydated and not completey with it after last nights do, you know how it is"

"hold it buddy, my sons crying I'll be right back" now while I was out there I pretended I was changing his nappy, realy I was giving him a chocolate for afternoon snack but when I came back my hand was covered with it from where hed mushed it into my fingers so I stuck my hand out and offered him a handshake while saying " sorry bout that, thanks for waiting around, look my names Danial, just had to change jeffs nappy" and then when I pulled my hand back I pretend to notice the "brown" on my hands which I then go an wash off under the tap at the front of the house. When he asks If he can come in to wash his hands I tell him best not, the dogs are out and they're both rotties and well they're not real good with strangers he looks at me unbelievingly before trying his speil again.

The dogs bark... "hold on somethings upset one of the pooches" so off to the back yard I trot to chase one of the dogs a bit send him round the front where he notices the sales man and starts trying to out bark trees. take care of that and then

"geeze not my daytoday, sorry mate now whats going on and what were you after?" at this time I changed my accent a little from my normal voice to that imitation yankee drawl I like to lay on when Im in that "Im a happly little redneck" kind of mood I get going sometimes.

"whoops phone"

"sorry mate, dinner in oven"

"alarm clock"

"urmm can you give me a sec I gotta go to the toilet" , "sheesh that morning after the night before grog bog sneaks up on you" (didnt want to shake my hand when i offered it up again)

I reckon I had him there for a good half an hour before he looked at me and said" you are just wasting my time arent you"

"yep"

he left wiping his hand along the grass on the way to the next house..

and the whole thing was worth it just to see the look on his face as he slowly inexorabley began to work out that while I was playing at being the perfectly interested potential customer he had never gotten past about 1 minutes worth of his spiel.

like I said in the beginning, give a man a fish...

you're a cruel, cruel man Dave....... i love your work!

This fits into the category of what comes round goes round..

Now first up Ive got to say, I'm always nice to cops, they're doing their job as best they can and they get to deal with the worst of the idiots who think the rules dont apply to them. I get to do it at work but I have a select group of idiots, I know how many of them there are, I know what they're likely to do and I know what to expect If I have a good run I can go a week without having to deal with them or anything they've freshly broken... Theres proof and tales of it on the forum elsewhere search it up if you must but trust me its out there. Now I try where I can to avoid these idiots but its a cops job to go find them... I can only just begin to imagine what a bad day for them is like...

I wave em when I pass em, slow down if I see em working a site and give them all the room I can when I roll past them when they have someone pulled over and they're at the drivers door of the idiot. Its a respect thing along with my firm belief in the fact that what comes around goes around...

A good proof of that occurred today I was heading out to get Alex from kindy and was dealing with one of those idiot who does the whole speed up, over take and then drive at a snails pace because he doesnt want to be behind anyone but doesnt want to do the speed limit.. so after crawling through some road works at a speed so slow the speedo didnt even want to register I passed him left on the round about I wasnt meaning to but I didnt know that you could turn left from the right hand lane on a roundabout.

As soon as we get out of the 1 lane exit of the round about and back into 2 lanes hes past me and back in the lead, mainly because I know the next set of lights and I wasnt in a real hurry as they'd just turned red and taking it slow which usually means I can go through the lights at about 50 just on upshift to 4th if I time it right and theres no one in the right hand lane then Im back in the left hand lane in front of the cars at the lights just getting on the move and Im away.

not today, with no one there but Mr Idiot I take it a little slower, this guy couldnt get a roundabout so I'll give him some leeway I creep past him at 30ish a good 3 seconds after the lights went green and get rewarded with the chirp of a **** poor way to many RPms launch followed a few seconds later by the dipping of the nose as somehow hes either grabbed the wrong gear and stalled out or hes mixed up the brake with the gass and hes dropping speed with the nose way down . I change lanes and about 10 seconds later hes past me at warp factor lots and then hes in front of me doing less than 40 again...

pass him at a slow point (dual lanes going the same way) and then everythings good as in about 100m the left lane ends and he cant safely pass me again so I can do my 60 and be done with him..

umm no.

400m ahead theres a semi trying to manouver into a driveway, no biggie I see him do it every other wednesday usually only takes him about a minute so I lift off the noise, cover the clutch, grab the shift, pop clutch grab nuetral, off clutch blip throttle on clutch snick 3rd drop clutch and then off the noise again. Perfect double clutch the speed washes right off so I do it all again to get second and just about as soon as Im off the clutch Im shunted. All stations panic, forget the fancy engine braking and gears and smack both feet into the brake pedal and try to eject myself out the back of the cab and into the tray where I can run away to safety as thats a mighty big set of bogies Im getting closer to than ID like to be.

ahh with a couple of meters to spare Im stopped, a few seconds later my pulse drops from humming bird to human and I give the bug eyed truckie whose fuel tank I've now stopped heading for a wave and a thumbs up, check its in gear, pull the fuel cut, turn the key off and grab the hand brake up. Im about ready to take stock of whats what when I get the lovely abuse-o-greeting I wasnt expecting and that Im not going to put to type. Essentially the gist of it is that because my brake lights werent working Im an idiot and this is all my fault because he couldnt see the semi past my rover to see that I had to slow down... remember what comes around goes around and since hes set the level of the conversation I reply in like and offer the advice of "its called reading the road ahead and engine braking you idiot"

For those of you who dont know or havent worked out Im in the ADF and prior to becoming a civvie in a uniform I was in the Army, I know Im going off on a tangent. I like to think that my reflexes rate fairly well when Im not yipped up on enough adrenaline to defibrillate a humpback let alone when I am after trying to pull up a couple of tons of rover and other car with nothing but 4 wheel unassisted drum brakes at my immediate disposal. Judging from his driving skills and the way he was handling himself Id put his synapse reaction time at somewhere between glacial and stopped

I saw it coming, to me it seemed as if hed taken out a week long advertising campaign with Tv spots, billboards, radio ads and finally on the day of opening put a big sign on it and then in the hours prior put an arrow in the sky with sky writing pointing to the flashing bright red neon sign that said "My fist coming this way soon"

I left handed the sliding window shut, propped myself up in the seat and jammed my shoulder up against the glass as best I could and was rewarded with the crunch of bones giving up the fight and what seemed like a half hour later a scream of agony. I sat down looked at him nursing his hand and smiled as if to say "nyah nyah nyah na na nyah" and when he reached for the door handle just pushed my right hand down on it then held the window in place with my left hand and waited.

sure enough cops turn up I have no idea who called them but I know exavctly where they came from and MR "I just broke my hand on a window" idiot is quickly led off and I face the usual "are you ok whats going on" Shortly one of the other cops comes over has a quick chat with the first one and its "can we check your lights.. no it seems your lights arent working..."

Duh, Im so stupid when Im coming down off of adrenaline I turn the ignition on and get them to check again "yep their all good thanks can you move your car?" I finally get out quick eyeball of the rear member and it looks good to me so restart drive off pull over and its time for statements.

theres a cop shop about 500m after the set of lights I passed the idiot in and there were 4 of em on scene in no time, with the idiot subdued one of the other cops is looking over the rover while Im giving my statement and comes over taps the first cop on the shoulder and asks to interupt and the next thing I know is I'm right to go. The puzzled look on my face as I havent finished giving my statement yet gets me the comment of " your the bloke who never speeds through the roadworks and always waves to me, your Airforce so we can find you if we need to but this looks pretty open and closed hes drunk, obviously tailgating, driving an unroadworthy and unregistered vehicle."

Fair enough to me, I hadnt taken any damage worth worrying about and a quick spray to put the paint back on the bottom of the chassis and youd never know it had happened looking at Fozzy and surprisingly the magnaish thing that had hit me didnt look that bad either, it wasnt dropping coolant and the wheels were still pointing in the same direction..

Be nice to cops, you never know when your going to need one to help you out of a situation where you can never get off the defensive.

you know it happens to me I get to have some great conversations with people and answer some questions that just dont need answering they should be answered rhetorically but when they stand there and look at you like a roo in a spotlight at 2 in the morning you just have to...


so here for your perusal is some highlights of conversations and how I ended them, I'll leave names and character assassinations out by now those details are the ones that you should be able to fill in using your vivid imagination. If theres something pertinent I'll mention it.



That nasty habit.... (this on occurred while the other person was smoking)

"Thats a nasty habit you've got wish you wouldnt do it around me"

"yeah but you know smokings adictive and I just cant quit"

"Im not talking about smoking"

"but I dont have, what habit are you talking about?"

"breathing"



hes an idiot..... (this was with someone who outranked me)

"did you tell him to go and keep an eye on the emergancy exit sign and to come back and tell you when it turned on?"

"yep"

"you do know that the sign you sent him to is a painted sign right"

"yep"

"why did you tell him to go and do that"

"hes an idiot and right now hes out of my hair"




Thats not a rumour.....

"Dave theres a rumour going around that you dont like me.."

"before we get to that let me correct your diction. You used the word rumor, you should have been using fact."



what airbags.... (the Yuppie female in question was young and driving a very flash dualcab ute)

"hey you cant let your son ride in the front of your ute" (for the purpose of this conversation we will overlook that fozzy only has one row of seats)

"ummm why not?"

"because if you have an accident if the airbags go off they will hurt him"

"lady the only time that airbags go off on this vehicle is when I'm nailing a blonde over the bull bar"



no reception.....

"can you hang on for a sec"

"sure why?"

"just checking my phone for reception"

"why, got to make a call"

"no, If it had reception I was going to let you use it to call someone who cares"


pallet strapping gear.....

"dave, why do you want pallet strapping gear"

"oh you know how it gets you start playing those kinky fetish bondage games with silk ribbons, tickling with feathers, dripping heated massage oils, next thing you know your strapping people to roof beams, inserting whole chickens and blowtorching toenails."



IF Ida seen you... (some civvy had come in too hot on an intersection and braked late coming into the roundabout nearly t boning me)

"is there some particular reason you chose to cut me off on the roundabout?"

"no, It was bad judgement, I was going a little faster than I thought and didnt see you till it was too late"

"couldnt stop in time huh thats what you get for driving a junky landrover"

"umm not at all sir fozzys brakes are tops"

"I dont understand ..."

"sir I wasnt braking when I cut you off."

"why not?"

"because I didnt see you If i had seen you it wouldnt have happened"

"yes it would have you were speeding"

"no I wasnt"

"yes you were or you could have stopped"

"Sir I wasnt speeding Im using a GPS for a speedo"

"you were speeding"

"No sir I wasn't the GPS says I was doing exactly the speed limit I have the track logging turned on, if you want we can ring up the MP's run the track log do the near miss paper work and see who they think was and wasn't driving correctly, trust me if id seen you Id have been driving differently"

"(very deflatedly) oh, and just what would you have done differently"

"Id have run you over"

Today I was going to post off on one of 2 things that have recently severly annoyed me...

It was either going to be the nit who held me up and made me late for work last week on the day that we had the legacy collectors out or

politics....

I'll give you a hint... Im not talking about bad driving habits on this one... If you have the same desire of politics that I usually express then I suggest that now is a good time to watch an educational show on austar or browse on elsewhere on the internet. There will be nothing fun for you here unless you happen to share my particular point of view heres the catch, your not going to work out what that is unless you read it.

Ok Ive had enough of politicians.

Did you know that if we cut all the politicians pay and benifits back to what I get paid that you could double the size of the Defence force? and I think that they should be cut back to that why? on their whim they can send people like me into harms way.

Im going to go one further, We need to get rid of the lot of em and have a dictatorship for a while... no soft vote options no cushy safety net to protect dole bludgers no rehab programs.. Im now going to top it all off with

We need a Military Dictatorship. For just long enough to get the economy properly sorted get education back on track and to beat a sense of comunal worth into the drips that are sucking off the tit of the tax payer and giving nothing back.

Im going to spell out my plan this isnt the full blown plan but its the basic elements.

Comercial enterprise and Free trade.
Yep thats staying, you reckon you can make a buck? you go for it. Just don't break the law...

First up Taxing.
Everyone gets $24K tax free how you earn it is up to you once you break that barrier you pay 20c in the dollar flat rate. thats it thats the income tax scheme for private persons.

Business get about the same deal but they pay 30c in the dollar on all profit and thats it.

transitional money is passed through and taxes are only paid for it once at the top of the chain. I make an item, and sell it to a business who sells it to a customer who pays for the item. I pay the tax on the item and then that price is absorbed into the cost of the item and thats it no-one else pays any other tax on the item.

All land will be considered as property of the crown and unless prior title is established then moneys for the initial sale of the land goes to the crown this sale is tax free any future sales of land will incur a landsales tax whats on the land is not included in the taxable value

Rates are easy, you pay for the infrastructure your building requires and thats it If you have a cardboard box with 30 toilets you will pay more than someone who has a 30 zillion dollar mansion with only one toilet.

similar sorts of rulings will apply for the rest of the govenrment regulated taxes, excises

yep Gunna loose a lot of money from the coffers arent I..... but Im not going to be spending much either...

Prisons as you know it are no longer going to exist. you break the law you become property of the crowns labour forces and your going to work. I'll leave the current judging system in place and when your proven guilty you will be scentanced to labour and your going to work. Im not talking lolipop ladies at school crossings Im talking sledgies, picks and shovels making roads. You know those sewers that need cleaning out, yep you guessed it that'll be what we now know as prisoners jobs. I hear you say that wont work well yes it will people on the work for the crown scheme will get a weeks worth of the same food coupons that will replace the dole (more on that later). You want more food coupons then you have to do work for the crown. Hungers a pretty good motivator.

The dole..
wont exist Gone, within a week of me being in charge it would be totaled, scrapped shredded never to be heard from again. food coupons with accomodation tickets will be all you get and you'll only get 4 weeks worth of them in 12 months for nothing. If you cant find work I'll find it for you, what used to be community service will be your lot you will be the lollipop ladies type jobs and you'll only get the easy free work for a year and then you get bumped up to the harder type work plenty of time for you to go and find a real job.

the employer of last resort.
The ADF you get here one of 3 ways.

You walk in off the street and you say " I want to do my bit. Full scale for you same as what I get now, some money, some food a place to hang your hat for you and your immediate dependants medical the lot. you get the pick of the good jobs officer, mechanic, clerk pilot whatever you want you get when it comes to ADF jobs. of course you have to pass all the tests that go with it.

You admit that you cant do it in the competitive market and need some shelter you get a place to stay you get to eat you get the not so fun jobs, cleaners, gate gaurds drill squads anything we happen to have a shortage off thats not quite slave labor and thats your lot. If you do all right, if you want to and you can opt to go in to the full time stuff. while your here at this level you will have access to the military schooling system to get you competative in the real world and if you want to leave and take your chances. How much money you get will depend directly on your performance.

You drop down here, you dont make it through the "dole" scheme and you'll be put here and you will paint rocks, polish gate posts, press uniforms for the rest of the ADF. The really really crappy jobs and you'll get the very basics of discipline with none of the perks or good training again once youve been sorted out and trained up enough to be able to hold a basic job you can elect to move up to the guys who cant cut it or go out for another go round this will also be punishments level for the rest of the ADF unless they really screw up, Screw up here and you will goto DFCE every base will have a DFCE Defence Force Correctional Establishment these places will almost be above the law Anything thats needed to break you down and make you go in the right direction is fair game so long as it dosen't require medical attention.

The punishment will fit the crime.

Oh he climbed to the top of the tower and he killed someone but hes a bit stressed... No problems We'll solve his stress issues and kill him right back.

He was driving recklesly and ran a car into a bus... no worries I'll just run that car straight into a car compactor. What he injured someone on the bus? thats not a problem either he is now responsible for the injured persons well being until they are rehabilitated and he will have to pay all the medical expenses.

drink driving? loss of driving rights.... FOREVER. you get caught drink driving and its straight off to a road gang for you preferabley the one responsable for cleaning up the remains of dead people from car accidents. and you'll use a tooth brush.

you broke something... you pay for it and you fix it up.

Old age pensions, Gone.
you'll get free accomodation, you'll get free food and you'll get the same free medical and attention thats ingrained into the ADF poeple who have minor infractions will become your careers they screw up and they get busted out and get to take their chances on the rest of the system. They get the same level as care as their old age pensioner for so long as their old age pensionor is willing to vouch for them.

The good samaritans policy.

If someone screws up while doing something to help you they are immune to prosecution. if a stranger breaks your ribs giving you CPR to bad, IF someone helps you change a wheel on your car on the side of the road and it falls off 5ks later again too bad. OF course you can refuse to be assisted and if they persist then all bets are off. IF they maliciously and delibirately do the wrong thing while helping you again all bets are off. (but youd want good proof)

Health care. You pay for what you need but the basics are free. you break a leg we'll put you up in a pack ward and get you fixed, free. you want to do that in a private room while a nurse gives you sponge baths and rubdowns. That you pay for.

Drug/alcohol rehabilitions.

simple we have a freaking great desert, youd quickly find yourself out there for 3 months with the ADF while they did something like umm waited for you to go freaky and get sorted and keep you alive while they did other important training for ADF'y type stuff.

Immigration policy

Simple you want to come live here you and your family get access to nothing but free medical for 5 years If you cant support yourself for that 5 years then you can have a free ride in a cargo plane back to the country of your origin. IF you make it that far and you want the whole shooting match then you go for citizenship.

Religious benifits...
you what? ohh ok I'll give you public holidays for your denomination but thats it if your a practicing yingtowwhateverdeityisyourgoddest and your religion doesnt specifically celebrate christmas then you dont get christmas day off but it specifically mentions that you have a day of rest bacause its "unclehomer booted barticus into scratchville today" or whatever else it is then you get it.

heres where it starts to come back...

DACC Defence aid to the Civillian community.
The purpose of the defence force is to protect australia, From everything if your a farming community and you cant get workers to rake dirt for your upcoming planting for next years harvest ask the ADF for help. If your case ha s merit (and your not just trying to cheat a profit) then a whole bunch of the military will turn up and herd the work gangs onto your property and work will begin. FOR Free, why? because it will be a bunch of grunts herding a bunch of criminals on the work for the crown scheme with enough logistical support to get the job done.



At the end of the day.

If I was the dictator Id keep you alive and well but you'd have a dull life. Id give you a job weather you want one or not and the better you did the better your life would be. There'd be no tolerance for bludgers and law breakers.

The day I got in office ID make this exact opening speech

Hi, Im dave, Im your dictator and will be for X years (4-8 depending on how big the mess is I have to sort out but Id prefer 4) at X-1 years I would front up and give this speech

Hi Im dave and Im now 12 months out from opening this government to democracy again I have achieved xy of my plan and hope to have yz finished by the time I hand over I appologise now for my short falls. The next election will be in 9 months and in the final 3 months of my term I will make every attempt to integrate the incoming governments officials into their offices before handing over control. My current government will be present on all ballots and if reelected to office then I will hold the next election 12 months after the end of this term.

My theory is this...

those who most want the power are generally the least suited to wield it.

The government is too bloated important decisions get chewed into the fat.

Everyone wants the nice guy whose going to give them everything for nothing..

The guy whose best suited for the job is the one with the good work ethic who doesn't want it but that will try to do any job as best he can without regard for how much money he can make off of it.

Ok I rambled out a bit there but its now late, I think I got the guts of it in there and will check it again later and if I think Ive hashed it I'll get a mod to unlock it for me so I can edit it... actually, no I wont, I'll rewrite it and post it again.

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

what airbags.... (the Yuppie female in question was young and driving a very flash dualcab ute)

"hey you cant let your son ride in the front of your ute" (for the purpose of this conversation we will overlook that fozzy only has one row of seats)

"ummm why not?"

"because if you have an accident if the airbags go off they will hurt him"

"lady the only time that airbags go off on this vehicle is when I'm nailing a blonde over the bull bar"

Dave from my experiences, the airbags aren't the things that go off in situations like the one you describe. Somethings wrong, you must need more practice.

dave........

3 questions

1: what about national service?

2: whats your plan for all the bleating heart, rent-a-crowd protestors?

3: where do i vote?