Basil

There was something about his saturnine features and suave air that appealed to my bohemian soul: he was reliable but erratic, debonaire yet rakish, friendly while standoffish. I recently discovered that he was born in Jo’burg, South Africa to an engineer who was accused of spying for the POMs and later beat a hasty retreat to England before the Boers did away with him. Funnily enough another favourite actor of mine, Sid James, was also South African(Jo’burg) by birth but Cockney by trade and left of his own will.

Carry on Holmes!

Where as Basil was forced into the insurance game for a year before finally treading the boards our Sid was a hairdresser before finding his feet in film. I’m not sure if Sid James ever portrayed Sherlock on film but I can still dream…

Anyway, I’m digressing slightly.  The point of this article is that Basil was my favourite until the even more saturnine and bipolar Jeremy Brett happened on the scene in the mid eighties.

Jeremy

Unfortunately our Jeremy suffered from a dietary affliction called appetite which had him gaining pounds as the series progressed. I’m not sure if he possessed any of the athletic talents of dear Basil but he was more than capable of putting on a good show when it came to detective dramatics and really did live for the role.  But then, Basil was still my favourite because it is damn near impossible to replace child hood loves no matter how hard one tries.

I am well aware that there have been many actors who have tried to carry the Holmes mantle and quite possibly it feels like there have been many more who have tried and failed. The insane Tom Baker donned the famous deerstalker for a four part BBC production of The Hound of The Baskervilles which has not passed before my eyes but I am lead to believe that it has not aged well with time and was not overly applauded upon its initial viewing. This has to be a travesty of dramatisation as Tom Baker is beyond a doubt the living embodiment of Sherlock.  I shall make a point of fossicking for this series on the webs when time allows.

Tommy

I am only considering actors who repeatedly played the great detective and not one offs but there is an exception to the rule. Apparently Billy Wilder had cast Peter O’Toole as Holmes and Peter Sellers as Watson for The private Life of Sherlock Holmes. As usual the plan changed and the lines went to Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely. It is not a bad film but if the truth be told but the two Peters would have been so much better.

Now we are more or less up to date and there is a new pretender to the crown of the Consulting Detective of all Consulting Detectives: Benedict Cumberbatch.

Benny

The BBC commissioned a new series of the popular Conan Doyle hero which was to be based on the originals but rewritten to accommodate contemporary morals and situations. I think that half of the success of the show is due to the writing and adaptation of the original by messers Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss(who plays Mycroft Holmes) and the other half to Benedict’s physical resemblance to all the spirits of Sherlock before. Everything is there in spades for the Holmes buff; a prominent nose, piercing eyes, a pasty face and a general cellar dweller appearance.  I would just like to say that although Bob Downey Jr is one of my prefered actors I don’t ever recall Sherlock mumbling his way through dialogue. Although the much maligned and erroneously married and now divorced Mr Ritchie may have found his way with The Great Detective I hope that he does not popularise our hero as Victorian Britain’s equivalent to Rambo and thus lead to a general downgrading of the stories:’Hands off Guy, he’s ours!’.

As a side note it would be unproffesional not to make mention of Viz magazine’s very own Sherlock Homo. No explanation needed.

Sherlock Homo's debut in Viz magazine.

This brings me to my initial sprout of an idea and my reasoning for starting this post. While I was checking up on the ancestry of  dear Mr Cumberbatch I stumbled upon the circumstances of his gap year in which he taught english to Tibetans in Tibet. Now that is the stuff of detective stories and gothic novels. Didn’t Batman have a spell there too?

I can just see the headline in the Tibet Express; The Sherlock Holmes Elementary School is now open for business.

Ever since the the Gemini towers collapsed into a heap of asbestos, burnt illegal aliens and conspiracy theories the boys with the whip hand have been cementing their power and increasing its range end efficacy. I’m not going to get all Noam Chomsky on your ass about this but I will just hook you up to a few articles and you tube doo-hickeys that I have found floating around the social media platforms this fine Sunday morning.

1. Here’s a video about getting taken away by the cops for saying that you can be taken away by the cops for saying that you can be taken away by the cops. Whether or not the poor loud mouths were incarcerated or not I don’t know and if they were charged is not clear. But as soon as you start resisting you are going to be busted….. also it has something to do with the new laws being brought in called NDAA (national defence authorisation act). One aspect of this act is that you can be arrested and detained indefinitely at the pleasure of the President of the U.S. of A for being a security risk. No proof is needed of your guilt other than you MIGHT do something in the future. This all very kafkaesque and I can see Tom Cruise as the police enforcer a la Minority Report. Before you start getting all smug and claim that all this shit is only for our Stateside cousins I would urge you to think again. These guys could nab you in your own back yard while you tend your tomatoes and Fed-Ex your ass to Gitmo without so much as a by your leave or stamp in your passport.                                                                
2. When I was growing up in Ireland and commuting to work/ the pub on the trains and buses there were always a few signs around that said ‘seats are not for feet’. Nothing would happen if you were in transgression of the sign, at worst an inspector might tell you to remove your feet, or another passenger might sneer at you but that would only happen if you were a respectable member of society. If you were on the margins you would be ignored and left alone to drink your cider and smoke your John Player Blue cigarettes. Not so in the New York of today as this article from the New York Times reports. In essence you can be held and arrested for encroaching on the next seat or for putting your feet on the seat in front. According to the article the idea is that at 2am in the morning the only people who would engage in such socially reprehensible behaviour are bank robbers and crack dealers and as such can be detained.

 We have so much to look forward to here in Australia as our government sells it’s cut price soul to the Yanks. Just recently they made cursing a public offence, which really is just feckin’ silly.

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling just a little deflated after all this nasty(nazi) news so I think a treat is in order which you can find right here or if you have ever wondered what Iggy Pop would look like in drag here is your opportunity.

Don’t be shy, you know you want to.

I couldn’t but resist to bring my camera with me on my next excursion that day.

Here are some pictures for your visual enjoyment:

Suspended Bat 1

Suspended Bat 2

If you look closely you might be able to spot the flies buzzing around the carcass.

Suspended Bat 3

This wretched creature would have been dead a day or two and was already noticeably swollen.

Suspended Bat 4

I drove past this afternoon but the bat was nowhere to be seen. I suspect the carcass exploded in the 40′C heat and fell to the ground on some unsuspecting person. I would have paid good money to have been there with a camera.

*Melbourne has several large colonies of bats/flying foxes numbering into the tens of thousands.

**It is also interesting to note that the city of Melbourne was founded by a  syphilitic John Batman on the 8th June, 1835. He called it Batmania which somehow didn’t stick.

On a recent trip to The Theosophical Society I picked up Manly P Hall’s ‘The Secret Teachings of All Ages’, plus a few books by Colin Wilson (he of The Outsiders fame) concerning The Occult and other such matters.  All up it was a hundred bucks well spent. I could have sourced the books on online but decided that my money would do some good at the aforementioned book shop.

As soon as I got home I buried my head in The Secret Teachings of All Ages and started to trawl my way through the vast amount of knowledge contained there in. Manly’s epic tome now rests wherever I sit and is like The Bible I never had as a child.

This is quite ironic because it’s really a handbook of all that is untrue in The Bible. All I have to do is flick the book open on any random page and I am instantly engrossed in its paragraphs and diagrams.  If you have an open mind or perhaps it needs a bit of opening I would whole heartedly recommend this volume to you. He has many other books on similar subjects and is all over YOUTUBE so you shouldn’t have any problems in tracking him down if you are interested in something closer to the truth than what is thrown about by the various religions, secret societies and  nefarious organisations of the world.

Old Manly P. Hall is not alone in his mystic writings but he has endured for quite some time and managed to stay relatively scandal free. This particular book was first published in 1928 in California. Take from that what you will but I would say that it might suggest that he has not been tainted by the low media of the last  century. However,  let us not forget that the thoroughly faecal News of The World was first published sometime around 1843, but thankfully has now been flushed down the u bend of popular culture.

Let me try and give you a brief insight into the contents of this epic tome:

There are chapters on Alchemy, Freemasonry, The holy Grail, The Pyramids, Sorcery, Hermetic philosophy, The Qabbalah, The Mystics, numerology etc. Basically, every topic that has been the subject of whispered words, secret societies and conspiracy theories.  I defy anyone to pick this book up and not be instantly absorbed by the wealth of knowledge that is laid before your eyes.

I would nearly suggest that before you go listening to crack pots such as Graham Hancock and Eric Von Daniken you should have a read of the book that they have all read. From my understanding of the pages written within I would support the following theories:

• All of Shakespear’s plays were written by somebody else, such as Sir Francis Bacon. The evidence is compelling to say the least.
• The bible should be read with a large grain of salt and is just a manual for controlling the masses and generating wealth and power for the organised religions of the world.
• Magicians and sorcerers versed in the dark arts are invariably tee totalling vegetarians. The vibrations of meat and alcohol do not allow for the spirits to course through the body and hinder the practice of the dark arts. Aleister Crowley would have observed these rules while he was a practitioner of Magik.
• Some of these wizardy types do indeed live to a ripe old age, as you would to if you only ate vegies, fruit, grains and water.
• All that stuff in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian and The Holy Grail is pretty much true or as close to any truth that is universally accepted. I venture that the Python boys read Manly too.
• The Knights Templar knew that the Gospels in the Bible were less than accurate and were about to spill the beans so they came to a sticky end at the behest of the doomed French monarchy.
• Jesus was misunderstood and returned  to the far east where he had spent his wilderness years after an unsuccessful homecoming in Palestine.
• There was more than one Jesus, Joseph, Joshua etc. The times were confusing for historians!

OPEN YOUR MIND!

This year I have had to do the

grown up thing of buying a new mattress.  I have previously got by with cheap futons, hand me downs and couches with which to rest my tired bones on.  This is a brief account of my experiences in the shady world of latex and springs.

When the springs of your mattress start getting intimate with your anatomy on a nightly basis you know it is time to renegotiate the relationship.  This is what forced me to do some internet research on the subject and try and get a decent perspective on the whole world of beds and mattresses that was about to adopt me for the next few days of Christmas.

On Boxing day we drove to a suburban outlet centre which contained at least 5 such shops all within metres of each other. ‘How convenient’ I thought to myself. That was the last positive thought I had until we drove off an hour or so later.  The first store we went into was Beds for Backs which sells its scientific approach to sleeping with all sorts of green ticks and gold medals from God only knows what receipt issuing authority.  The store is large with beds everywhere. We are approached by a young salesman from the sub continent with matching accent.

We are asked a few staple questions which serve to engage us in the sales pitch, such as : ‘Do you get a sore shoulder/hip/back when you sleep? Does your partner roll around a lot and wake you up in the night? Do you like a soft, medium or a firm bed?  Once we have answered these questions we are shown a bed to lay down on. This is when the sales pitch started hitting the big gears.

We are dazzled with the science of sleep zones and removable back supports before being shepherded along to another bed to lie on. All the while the salesman is reciting his script as if he is reading it right there in front of us. We slowly progress from sprung beds to pocket springs and then latex. All these beds feel the same apart from the one with the special removable back support do-hickey which was not that dissimilar to sleeping on a couch with wooden supports between the cushions.

We ask about the much heralded Boxing day discounts to which we are informed that these beds don’t attract GST so there is a saving of 10% straight of the bat. This is because they are a ‘medical product’ or some such guff. 10% is a crap saving in the world of beds, this I soon found out. And there would be a month long wait to get the bed. Out the door we went and in the next door we found Forty Winks and a whole new world of beds.

Again, the salesman was right over to us and all over us with his earnest sales pitch. All the same questions were asked with the same answers being given. We were again ushered to several beds all increasing in price but there would be a hefty discount at the end. We tried latex beds, Tempur beds, and sprung beds. This salesman was truly oily but was embarrassingly out greased by another member of staff who really shouldn’t be allowed walk the streets in any capacity. Every few minutes or so the sales guy would run off to the desk and come back with a new price as he tried to reel us in with his bland, obvious sales delivery.

Incidentally, don’t be bowled over by the NASA invented Tempur memory foam leg spinner; it’s a crock of shit and not that comfy and is used by nursing and incontinence homes.

We left the store with some prices bouncing around our addled heads and went straight into Snooze, or Captain Snooze or whatever it is called. Here we were allowed to walk around unhindered and lie on beds at our will. Nobody came near us or even tried to. This was a nice experience. We checked some prices and bounced some mattresses before leaving and deciding that we were done with this and were going to Check out Myers across the road.

We were met by a saleslady who guided us through the same repetitive  questioning before giving us some prices. She assured us that she was not on commission and was there for us.

In all of the shops we couldn’t compare like for like as there are so many permutations of springs, sleeping zones, latex and single and double soft tops.

The only conclusion we could come to after all this sales talk and sleeping expertise was that we were into latex, in the nicest possible way.

There was nothing for it but to hit the internet and start anew.

All of the web sites I visited had various claims to latex purity and one even promised organic certification for the environmentally conscious, at a price though.

What I discovered is that there are probably two or three factories that make all the latex mattresses in the world and the same again for sprung mattresses.  The manufacturers then rebrand mattresses according to which retailer is buying them. The customer is then left with a choice of a myriad of beds with more sleep inducing names than you could shake a stick at. In essence you cannot buy the same bed from Snooze and Forty Winks and therefore cannot compare the pricing. All of the big bed manufacturers practice this ancient art of smoke and mirrors and are supported by the retailers et al.  This allows them to keep the prices high and the customer confused.

After much deliberation I ventured to a store that I found on the web which was located in a warehouse down south of the city. The owner/sole employee was there and basically confirmed all my suspicions about the trade that I was now learning about. He told me that he buys his latex mattresses from the same Belgian factory as everybody else and then gets them covered in China or Indonesia.

He was as direct and as honest as a self employed man can be under the circumstances. After discussing pricing I left to consider my options.

The next day I drove the ute down to the warehouse and picked up a queen size, 5 zone latex mattress with two free latex pillows and a mattress protector (a common sales practice) for the princely sum of $1500 cash. I’m pretty sure that I saved myself $1000 on the bed compared to what was on offer elsewhere. My latex bed is comfy and dust mite and allergy free. My old sprung mattress is now at the local tip waiting to be recycled/buried. The local tip is the cheapest way of getting rid of your old bed. The nearest one to me in Reservoir/Coburg charges $24 to take your old scratcher, other places will charge up to $45 and more if you want them to pick it up. One such company has gone into liquidation recently and was not available for comment.

I am now a happy latex loving man with no regrets and a great nights sleep.

Here are some informative sites:

One        Two       Three       Four      Five

We laughed and laughed until it hurt.

It really was quite a surprise to stumble upon this scene after several bottles of rum on the beach.

I would suggest that you turn the sound down.

The Bacardi Building, Havana.

Havana skyline.

Fellow cruisers, Havana to Varadayo.

Scene from a moving vehicle.

Scene from a moving vehicle 2.

Communist beach kitty, Varadayo.

Varadayo beach scene.

Sunset, Varadayo.

Early morning Varadayo.

Greyhound, Trinidad, Cuba.

Trinidad building.

Another building, Trinidad.

Our host's happy and quiffed dog, Trinidad.

A place to get rhythm, Trinidad.

Welcome sign to La Boca.

La Boca beach front.

Brain coral, La Boca.

Amazing lizard, La Boca.

Domingo's beast, our host, La Boca.

CHiPs, Cuban Highway Patrol.

Varadayo local

Spotted this fairy in Carlton today lugging an amp and stuff along the bicycle lane. I reckon she was headed to the gardens to seduce some young prince.