Failure City

Jeez, I've had an arse day. I just don't seem to be able to get a damned thing right.

(1) I'm a news-free zone. I'm doing a bit of news instead of my usual fluff, but news has escaped me. The prospect of a return to the Real Thing excited me for about a day, but then the wheels fell off, as they were bound to. I've called my old contacts, stirred my usual pots, but nada, nyet, fuck all. Even for a half-hearted hack, this is really pathetic. Every idea I've had has crashed and burned or been worthy of nothing more than a five sentence brief. Yes, I'm a failure. Bartender! Double vodka and soda on the rocks, hold the soda, hold the rocks. But bring some crisps, OK? I like crisps.

(2) Trick-or-treaters continue to shun me. I realise it's about four days past Hallowe'en, but the kiddles in my street have finally decided to go trick-or-treating. I suspect this is because their parents are stupid and don't realise you are supposed to knock on doors on 31 October rather than 4 November. But halle-bloody-lujah anyway, eh? I made the effort to buy the chocolate, after all. So, I wandered in from the pub and found four witches, a pantomime horse and a couple of ghosts pootling up and down my street along with a couple of parents (one of whom was wheeling a pusher - was the baby dressed as Beelzebub?) "Yay!" I thought. "I won't have to eat all of the fun-sized Mars Bars myself!" I turned on my front light, put the Mars Bars on the hall table and thought about my doorbell some more, but STILL no-one rang it. I've now been rejected by six-year-olds in manky costumes. Fine, you little shits. I'm having a Mars Bar RIGHT NOW. Do you think it's because they can sense that I don't like children?

(3) I made myself a lazy-arse pizza margherita. "Nuffin' wrong wiv a lazy-arse margheri'a," I 'ear you say (in your fake Cockney accent). Yes, yes, there is. If you drop the fucking thing on the floor, there's a world of misery associated with it. I have no idea how this happened. Toast falls butter-side down. Bread falls peanut butter-side down. This is a well-understood phenomenon - it's just gravity, yeah? Peanut butter is heavier than toast. I'm an Arts graduate, but I can understand that. It happens all the time. How, then, did my pitta-bread-with-tomato-puree-and-oregano-and-grated-cheese-put-under-the-griller-and-toasted-nicely manage to fall PITTA-side down on the kitchen floor? And how the hell did I manage to drop it in the first place? One minute I was unsticking the slightly crusty (and therefore yummy) bits of cheese from the baking tray and the next, hey presto! Floor pizza. Sigh. Somehow it's worse if it looks perfectly normal apart from the fact it's sitting on the floorboards instead of a plate. After all, if it fell cheese-side down, you'd never even contemplate eating it.

And no, I didn't. I'm not that desperate. I've got Mars Bars, remember?

I'm thinkin' about my doorbell

It's Hallowe'en again. Boo yah. Every year, ABC Radio and The Traumatiser join together in banging on about the Americanisation of our culture and overseas traditions becoming a part of Australian life, isn't-it-awful-blah-blah-blah. Naturally, driven by the media frenzy, I expect hoards of children to come trick-or-treating.

So as not to disappoint said midgets, every year I buy individually-wrapped chocolate bars. When I first started preparing for crowds of ankle-biters dressed as ghouls and Spice Girls, I used to put the chocolates in a little bowl by the front door. You know, so I'd be ready. I'd even buy two sorts.

Naturally, the only time swarms of children have beseiged our door is when I have forgotten about Hallowe'en. Like last year. Completely forgot it. We didn't have so much as a Tim Tam in the house, so of course, we had trick-or-treaters.

Of course, they were opportunistic little bastards, but the whole thing was done in such a bloody half-arsed Australian way that if we'd had chocolate, they would have scored the lot. Here's how it played out:

(Ding dong)

Bloke: Uh, yeah?
Three lads: Trick or treat!
Bloke: (sceptical) Where are your costumes?
Lad number one: We've only got this fake arse (turns around, displays plastic buttocks worn over shorts)
Bloke: Hmm, fake arse, eh?
Lad one: (scratching) It's itchy, too. It's pretty hot out.
Bloke: (yelling) Red, there are trick-or-treaters here with a fake arse. Do we have any chocolate?
Me: (interested) A fake arse, you say?
Bloke: Yeah.
Me: Hmm, I'd pay that one. Sadly (and uncharacteristically), we're a chocolate-free zone.
Bloke: (sees random snack-sized box of sultantas on kitchen bench) What about this box of sultanas?
Three lads: Yeah, whatever.

Seems like a hell of a lot of work for a box of sultanas, but that's just me. I'm inherently lazy.

After last year's Fake Arse Incident, I made sure there were mini Mars Bars in the fridge tonight. But no matter how much I thought about my doorbell, no-one rang it.

Guess we'll have to eat the Mars Bars ourselves, then. (Hallowe'en rule of thumb: never buy chocolate you don't like.)