The Unforgiving Outback

Wow.

They finally reached Cooper’s Creek on April 21, only to find the camp
abandoned.
There was a message cut into a tree “DIG 3 FEET N.W.”. They did
so, and found some supplies, and a letter explaining that the party had given up
waiting, and had left only that morning. Burke’s team had missed them by only 9
hours.

The three men again left the camp. Wills became too weak to continue, so they
left him behind with some food. Burke died on June 20. King returned to Wills,
but found that he was already dead. He found a tribe of aborigines willing to
give him food and shelter, and there he stayed until he was found by a search
party on September 18.

Meanwhile, William Brahe decided to go back to Cooper’s Creek and check to see
if they had returned. When he arrived, the three men had already left for the
cattle station and the camp was again deserted. He assumed that they had never
been there, and he did not think to check to see if the supplies were still
buried. He left to rejoin the main party.

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Nostalgia for Posts Past

Am I the only one that gets radical enjoyment out of going through my archives? I mean, I’ve written some pretty radical stuff. Never mind that the things I seem to prefer are always the things that get 0 to 1 comments. It’s all y’all’s fault not mine. I’m objectively funny.Okay, so it turns out that I still owe somebody a forbidden prize of mystery. I’m thinking Eggo for going all out. Anybody object?

And new contest: I need somebody who’s into it or whatever to go through all my archives and find all of the things that I said I was going to say, write, or do that I did not and tell me what they are. Personally, I remember owing at least two people one shiny dollar (Aussie currency okay?).

Ooh, and who here remembers when I was fascinated over what I’d do if zombies arrived (here? die, most likely)? Or my various transcripts (I usually hate posting these, but every once in a while I have a funny snippet that needs an audience). Or the goodie grab bags from when I couldn’t access the internet and I just kept writing down all my post ideas?

Or my sociology of the neighbor and myopia? And what about the random, hurtful e-mails? Or when I cared about scene points? Or my constant whistling and clapping (you watch, some day it’s going to come in handy) or when I realized my own genius?

Or that I’m now a level 7 philosopher?

Don’t listen to me, I’m an old kook in love with his own silhouette..

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“Are you Trying not to get laid?”

Damn it. Sometimes I wish people would start rumours about my sexual orientation.When I first started college, my friends and I would always hang out together and poke fun at each other. Two of the common staples involved the hidden gayness of every guy and the promiscuity of all of our collective mothers.

I, being as good at taking verbal abuse as I am at giving it, was always the subject of the random gay joke. I’d do things that were random or odd and my friend Fernie would say “Jeez, are you Trying not to get laid?”

For the first few semesters, these jokes were commonplace and we’d all laugh at them, though I would secretly resent them. Just because I wasn’t trying to get every girl, I thought, didn’t mean that I was gay. Not that I’d expect anyone (with the possible exception of Clay Aiken) to understand.

Now, though, looking back, I realize that it was just us messing around and having fun. And the reason that people made fun of me, apart from being perenially single, was that I was such an easy target. They made fun of me because it seemed like a possibility, but they all knew it wasn’t. After all, if they thought that they were really offending me, they wouldn’t joke about it.

Then.. the jokes all stopped..

Suddenly, it all seemed so plausible. And that scared me more than anything else. I tried to liven up the situation by joking about myself, but that just made things worse. And I realized then that the joke was on me.

Nobody wants to joke about something that could be true. I mean, wasn’t that the reason we stopped joking about Fernie’s mother?

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