I'Ll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails. - (13 page)

I have taken fifty dollars from petty cash and will ask Simon if he wants to have a drink after work.

Regards, David.

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 21 November 2011 2.14pm

To: Simon Dempsey

Subject: ndezvous

Dear Simon,

I'm going for a drink after work if you'd care to join me. Your shout.

Regards, David.

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From: Simon Dempsey

Date: Monday 21 November 2011 2.37pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: ndezvous

No thanks dickhead.

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From: Jennifer Haines

Date: Monday 21 November 2011 3.56pm

To: Simon Dempsey

CC: David Thorne

Subject: Appointment with John from TWE

Hello Simon,

Due to a Section 3.2 of the Employee Workplace Agreement, when certain accusations are made against co-workers the company is required under workplace compliance laws to provide reasonable steps to resolve the matter.

As part of this agreement, which you signed, you are required under company policy to complete a government certified course. Taking the course does not mean you have sexually harassed anyone.

I have made an appointment with John Bryant from TWE for you to undertake this course at 11.30am next Wednesday.

It should only take around 2 hours to complete the course with a half hour break in between for lunch.

Additionally, I would appreciate if you and David could discuss and sort out any further issues without resorting to filing out an F26-A as I'm sure all of us have better things to do with our time than deal with this nonsense.

Thank you, Jennifer

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From: Simon Dempsey

Date: Monday 21 November 2011 4.25pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: No Subject

You fucking liar.

Goat Rotation: A guide to rotating a goat by 37˚

Ten reasons I probably shouldn’t be alive: camping

I have never been a massive fan of camping. I enjoy the interesting bits of it like lighting fires, pitching tents and paddling in kayaks, but the bits where you sit around on fold up chairs inbetween the interesting bits without access to television or a computer are boring. I have comfy chairs at home and a Keurig and pizza delivery and when I get bored I can argue on forums about things I couldn’t care less about or take a hot shower. 

I realise the media has perpetuated the myth that all Australian’s enjoy the outback and that we all own big knives, wear dungeree shorts, and wrestle crocodiles, but this is not the case. I don’t know anyone who has ever wrestled a crocodile or has the slightest inclination to do so. When Steve Irwin was stabbed in the chest while teasing a stingray that was minding its own business, I was sad for his family’s loss but the suggestion of creating a ‘National Steve Irwin Day’ and describing him as “an ambassador for Australia” and “ecological spokesperson” left me bewildered. All he did was perpetuate the same clichés that Crocodile Dundee did in the 80's and while I am all for the tormentation of animals, I cannot recall a single instance where wrestling a stressed alligator for ten minutes instead of tranquilizing it peacefully was actually speaking for anything apart from his bank balance. I would like to wrestle Bindi in a muddy creek for ten minutes, rolling her around, cutting off her air supply and bending her limbs back before bounding her with rope and throwing her in the back of ute for no other reason than it would be good television.  If I had been the crocodile Steve Irwin dangled his baby in front of a while back, I would have just said “fuck it, you dont get baby on the menu that often.”

Several years ago, I went camping with a few associates and knowing there would be times between lighting fires, pitching tents and paddling in kayaks, I thought it would be entertaining for everyone if I jumped out from behind bushes while wearing a bear suit. Renting the only ‘bear’ costume available, which was actually a koala, I altered it as best I could to make it look frightening by taping down the fluffy ears, adding sharp cardboard teeth and constructing two downward slanting eyebrows with electrical tape.

While everyone was sitting around the campfire, I excused myself, donned the concealed costume and leapt out yelling 'Rawr.'

Moments later, I realised the screaming and falling back off chairs was not due to wearing a bear costume but the fact I was standing in the fire while wearing a bear costume made of polyester. After a two-hour drive to the nearest hospital, I underwent three weeks of skin grafting on my left leg and six months of hearing about how I ruined the camping trip. To this day, when anyone asks about the scars, I simply state "It involved a camping trip and a bear, I don't like to talk about it" which is true because I don't.

The last time I went camping was with a group of people I didn’t like - other designers from my work. I have no idea why I agreed to it but I did so at the pub after several beers and I was the only person who owned a four wheel drive vehicle with roof racks on which to place kayaks so somehow, their opinion not mine, I would be letting everyone down by not participating.

The next day we all drove to a secluded spot, four hours from Adelaide, on the banks of the Murray River. After lighting a fire and pitching tents, everyone sat around talking about work and drinking warm beer (due to the task of remembering to bring ice being left to Simon), so I decided to take a kayak for a paddle to get away from them. I changed into boardshorts, grabbed my iPhone, and paddled off down the river towards a bend where I would not be seen by the others.

Finding that the current was quite strong and realising I would have to paddle back against it, I rounded the bend, pulled up against a dead tree branch sticking out of the water, and tied my kayak to it using the drawstring from my boardshorts.

Removing my shirt and lying back to enjoy the warmth of the sun, I put in my earphones and fell asleep listening to Lil’ Jon and The Eastside Boyz yelling about “throwin’ stuff up.”

Approximately five hours later, I woke up. Looking down, I discovered my entire body covered by several hundred mosquitos. Sitting up quickly to brush madly at my torso and legs, the iPhone that had been laying on my chest went flying, ripping the earbuds from my ears,  and dissapeared beneath the algae laden surface.

Looking around, I also discovered that the tree branch I had secured the kayak to with my drawstring, rotten from years of being waterlogged, had snapped off and was now trailing behind my kayak which had drifted with the current several kilometres down the river. 

Having no idea how far away I was from camp but knowing that I had better make it back before nightfall, I began paddling madly back up the river, pausing every few minutes to scratch at the thousands of bites.

An hour later it was dark. I’m not talking about the kind of dark you get in cities where there is usually a vague glow from lights being reflected by clouds or pollution, or even the kind of dark where you can kind of navigate by moonlight, this was the kind of dark where the term ‘pitch’ is appropriate. I could no longer tell where I was steering the kayak or even if I was heading up the river or down. Using my lighter only lit up about a metre around me making the darkness beyond seem darker. I have read somehwere that sailors can navigate by the stars but even when told that a certain structure of stars is a ram or horse-man with a bow and arrow, I fail to see it. With no city light relection, clouds or moon, the entire sky was filled with stars. Except for a black spot without stars directly ahead of me which I aimed for - figuring it was probably another dead tree sticking out of the water to which I could at least secure my kayak and wait out the night. 

I was about half way to the object when my kayak scraped, and then wedged against something beneath it. Figuring I must have struck a shallow area near shore, I tried to release the kayak by paddling backwards and even pushing my paddle down like a gondola driver but it would not come free.

Not knowing how far from the shore I was or even its direction or what the object ahead of me was, I did not for a second consider stepping out into the water.

The first time I had gone camping on the river many years prior, I had let my feet dangle in the water off the side of a jetty and not two minutes had gone by before I felt a sharp pain in my toe, pulled my foot out of the water, and found a turtle the size of a dinner plate attached and unwilling to let go of its meal. I had to club it to death with a beer bottle.

Having no option but to wait until the light of morning, I curled up in the kayak and a few hours later, fell asleep to sounds of waves lapping against the side and the whine of mosquitos attempting to find an area not already bitten.

I awoke at first light to the cries of “Hello? Are you alright?” and “he looks like he has a million mosquito bites all over him” coming from quite close. I sat up to discover that the object I had been heading for the night before was a houseboat moored to the side of the river and was only about four kayak lengths away. An elderly couple stood on the deck drinking coffee looking at me. My first reaction was to ask, “where am I?” and the man replied “In a kayak.”

After accepting the kind offer of a cup of coffee and calamine lotion from Joyce and Richard, and being told that Pelican Point was “approximately an hour up river”, I set off and arrived at camp several hours later due to Joyce and Richard’s wildly inaccurate approximations, to find everyone packing and quite pissed off that nobody else got to have a turn in the kayak. No search party had been sent out and two people thought I had been in my tent the whole time because I “never join in with group activities.”

On the four hour angry drive back, I made everyone to listen to Lil’ Jon and The Eastside Boyz yelling about ‘throwin’ stuff up’ on loop.

Dressing like a woman doesn't make you special

There are many things to be said for working in the design industry but as they are mostly negative, especially those regarding clients, I would rather write about robots.

If I was a robot, programmed to serve people all day, I would throw myself off a cliff. Working in the design industry is a lot like being a robot. A robot that curses its positronic brain for not allowing it to ignore the first law and attach spinning blades to its arms and take out the next human that states "that's nice but can we try it in green?" or "can you make the text bigger?"

Actually, scratch that, working in the design industry is more like being a whore. A dirty whore who has programmed its mind to find a happy place rather than be outraged by client requests.

There are many things to be said for working in the design industry but mostly that it is like being a dirty robot whore.

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From: Robert Schaefer

Date: Monday 8 November 2010 9.11am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Artwork

Hello David,

Can you send me the artwork for our business cards you did last year. Finsbury Press has asked for the original files. I need the artwork before Wednesday so either this afternoon or tomorrow is fine.

Thanks Rob

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 8 November 2010 10.24am

To: Robert Schaefer

Subject: Re: Artwork