'Voir Tales: December 2011

Call that an axe?

Link: A TOMAHAWK wielding bandit has been terrorising the northern suburbs.

Out on the prow

The Broadway Queen gift shop has a fantastic range of t-shirts. I had been worried I'd missed out on this one in the Christmas mayhem. Amazingly enough it was still there today though.

Today I witnessed the touching sight of a father and son in matching wife beaters taking a bike ride together. They got to the end of the street, then I heard dad calling:
"Go back to the house now mate. Go on ahead of me and stay on the footpath. I'm gunna walk. I'm fucked."

Merry Christmas from the 'Voir!

And to all the lovely Russians who keep visiting this blog:

С Рождеством Христовым от водохранилища, все, что Вы замечательный русских!

The best laid plans

It's always upsetting to see a new age business bite it in the arse, but they should have seen that this is a closed market. In Reservoir people already know that they are alive. And brilliant. And if you suggest a course of personal development, they will quite justifiably tell you "I'm fine. Fuck off and fix yourself."

Bob was here

For anyone not familiar with Bob's click here for a crazy bargain.

Sweet Ride

I am gardening when a pair of tween girls appears at my gate.
"Excuse me," one of them asks, "Could you drive us to the end of the street?"
"Why?"
"We're tired and can't be bothered walking."
I look to the end of the street. It's a couple of hundred metres at most. I look back to the girls. They look back at me. No-one blinks.
"Sorry." I say, "I can't. It's not far. You'll be right."
They confer.
"But you've got a car."
They point to it.
I nervously feign an urgent burst of pruning.
"I'm busy. The exercise will be good for you."
They walk on, scowling. A few minutes later they sail past my fence squealing with delight on the back of a hotted up 3-wheeler bike with a tray being ridden frantically by an awkward tween boy.

"Hey guys, check this out."

Link: BBQ burn in Reservoir

A MAN was burnt while lighting a barbecue in Reservoir last night.

The man, aged in his 30s, was injured while trying to start the barbecue about 8.30pm, advanced life support paramedic Elisa Cuomo said.

“The man apparently poured petrol on to the barbecue which flashed back,” she said.

He suffered superficial burns to his back and abdomen.

The man was given pain relief and taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a stable condition.

All along the watchtower

Reservoir has a Jehova's congregation! Wow, those guys aren't about the simple challenges, are they?
I hope they doorknock me. I've got loads of questions for them.

Cuckoo's Nest

I am walking down a local street when a preschooler tears out of a driveway and flies past me, a blur of tiny flaying limbs and teeth and fury, screaming "Fuck yaaaa, ya fucken mole!!! Fuck yaaaaa......!!!!!!"
As I reach the gate mum slumps gasping onto the fence and stops to light a cigarette.
"Get away from you did he?" I ask.
She exhales.
"Little bugger got out the bloody window again."

Deck the halls

For anyone considering taking their own Rezza Christmas shots, I would offer this advice: when a dog starts barking in the house, put down the camera and accelerate. Don't hang around to get a few more shots.

Urban renewal

A car drove through a wall of the Reservoir library recently. It remains unclear whether the incident was a protest against the library's inefficiency in stocking the Reed/Metallica album, or if it was in fact phase one of the government's redevelopment plan.

A question of belief

Overheard:

"He's gunna get a tatt right here on his arm of a Buddha. He's not Buddhist, but he likes the beliefs an' shit. Or he might get one of a guitar."

Got protection?

I so badly want to find out more about this.

Lonesome cones

There's an ice cream truck in Reservoir that plays the blues. Listening to it curb crawl the back streets of my neighbourhood was about the most unsettling thing I could imagine, until a friend suggested I visualise Jim Jarmusch driving it.

Show and Tell

Link: Boy, 12, suffered stab wound in incident at Reservoir
Apparently up here being stabbed in the face is considered an "upper body wound". I guess I can see that. Sort of.

More Power

An enthusiastic young bloke knocks at my door promising he won't try to make me change my electricity supplier. I'm intrigued to find out where the conversation could go from here.
"You're not selling lollies or bin bags are you?" I ask.
"No." he says.
He clears his throat.
He goes on to tell me that I should change my electricity provider.
I compliment him on his canny employment of semantic manipulation.
We share an awkward moment of silence.
He promises me huge savings, all in percentile rather than dollar values, which is exciting, mainly because he has a graph. I tell him how nice the colours are. He thanks me.
Eventually I reluctantly have to tell him that I have already chosen to pay extra for a green energy plan. I tell him I believe it's an important stance to take, even if only symbolic, if we are to have any influence on driving the industry towards sustainable outcomes in the long term.
"Wow." he says.
"I've never had one of those before. I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

It's been a good year

2010

2011

Short Changed

The Spring Street Coles has no real coffee and no bottle shop, but has an entire aisle dedicated to baby goods. No wonder the women here are so pissed off. I know I was.

You had me at Goon

For anyone looking to join me in the Rezza action, I've found this fantastic bungalow for rent:

Link: Sweet Ass Bungalow
"Looking for a young heavy drinker that likes fun goon enthusiast MUST have a fantastic music taste aka no fucking popsters the house is pretty sweet massive back yard the bungalow is dope email or text me your likes and hates and I'll get back to you"

I like that the room amenities are specified as "Yard", and that you can be gay or straight, just so long as you're not in a relationship. This household is clearly all about the lifestyle.
I would love to know more about "Pet".

Robin Hood

Overheard:
"I'm makin' toys for Christmas for the cancer kiddies at the children's hospital. It cheers them up and it gives me something to do. And the materials don't cost me anything. They're hot - fell off the back of a truck."

We've got both kinds

Each Way Bet

Overheard at the Summerhill Go-Lo:
"Nah that's alright. We can get dressed up and get pissed at the races instead."

Suffer the Little Children

My neighbour's kids pop round regularly to bash at the door.
"Let us in!!!!" they scream, and "Have ya got any lollies?"
Sadly I can't let them in any more, because I've realised that my insurance company may view it as complicit behaviour. Instead I pretend not to be home.
"We know you're in there! We can see you!"
"Sorry kids, I'm on the phone." (Move to back room holding remote control to ear)
...
.....
.......
...........
................
"Are ya off the phone yet?!?"
...
.....
.......
.........
Car alarm goes off in the distance.

Where there's a Will

Parenting in Reservoir:

"Get off the bloody road!!!"
"Why?!?"
"Cos uncle Will won't love ya!!!"

Exotic Monster

This blog has had a lot of hits from Russia. Not an extraordinary amount, but more than enough to confound me, given the nature of my content. So I googled "Reservoir Russia" and found a number of likely links that might explain the phenomenon. Eventually, though, I decided that this one was my preferred explanation:

Link: Piranha caught in Russian reservoir

An angler in the Urals got an unlikely catch – after hooking a flesh-eating Amazon piranha.

The exotic monster, weighing in at 1.1 kg, was caught by Igor Voronov in Verkhnetagilskaya power station’s reservoir in the Urals. Experts worry that more piranhas are left in the lake.

“As usual, the float moved, and I felt that I had caught something big. But when I took the fish out of the water, I was flabbergasted: it was something otherworldly,” Voronov told LifeNews.

“It could have only appeared in the reservoir from fish tank owners. They buy them, and when they grow up, set them free in the lakes,” ichthyologist Nadezhda Burdakova said.

Experts will check the water for more predators, but stress that the Russian winter will kill them anyway.

I would like to apologise in advance to the Soviet Union as a whole, for the exponential effect this post will most likely now have on the misdirection of Russians to my blog, and also for how utterly incomprehensible the above article from the Moscow News will probably be by the time it has been auto-translated out of, and then back into, Russian language by your preferred web translation site.

Feeling Peckish

It just now occurred to me that I haven't heard the rooster over the road crow since right before Halloween.

Citizenship Test

Are you from Reservoir? Find out by taking this quick quiz:

What do you see in the picture below?

a) Pizza Hut

b) Two blokes bumming each other

c) The most contentious blackspot intersection in the Northern region

d) The sickest place to lay patch

e) All of the above

Scoring:

a - e: You are probably from Reservoir

Transaction Declined

Link: Theft Bid Fails as ATM Blast Shakes Suburb

I'm not sure what I like most about this story: the fact that these guys managed to blow up both an ATM and a chemist and not make off with either cash or drugs, or the fact that the media informant thought it best to protect his identity with the name "Pasquale."

'Voir Tales