Death To Softdrink!

So one sits in front of the television and one sees an advert. The gist: drink enough Pepsie and the moguls will fly you to England and let you ride with the Stig.
Typical.
As soon as I come up with a fabulous idea, it gets ripped off by a beverage giant. Just great.
That's the whole problem with trying to come up with something original though, isn't it? The fact that there is precious little that has not been done before, or that isn't already patented for future use by someone else.
They used to frighten us with this at uni, the sad truth that there are only eight storylines or something to that effect. One forgets the exact number, but it is depressingly low.
The good news is that with enough twisting you can use these fun facts in your favour. If nothing you do can be original, then you are free to produce the best rip-off of all your favourite things ever. Without feeling like you could have done better.
See, it's all about complacency in the end.

Right now, for example, I am plagiarising myself. Outstanding.
Beautiful for example, my soon to be Lulued little baby of a story, is all about getting something you want for nothing. Making people believe that you deserve something, even though you have not done anything too special. And although my glorious heroine wants something a little more sinister than a ride in a cheapish car in the company of hilarious Englishmen, it still is a very similar deal. Fascinating.

Actually, I am taking the wrong road here, aren't I. This is supposed to make the world think I am worthy, not expose myself as someone exceptionally unworthy. So let me rephrase:

Uhm.

I am so worthy, I don't even have to drink a single Pepsie (which takes hideous anyway) and I will still get to drive the reasonably priced car.

Yea. Nah. That doesn't work as well as I hoped.

But who cares? Should this come into fruition - a Mazda's chance in the tropical rainforest - it would be so ridiculous... it could probably get by on that merit alone.
The great things in life. So many of them are ridiculous.

To all your strange animals out there,

have a ridiculous evening.

Recruiting The Machine

(If someone was reading this the copyright-squad would come crashing through my window tonight and take me away, I’m sure of it. In fact, this will be a great way to check if the right people are reading...not that there are wrong people...oh great. Way to alienate my vast readership.)

I had a very educational weekend, motorsport loving people of the world, as I have managed to obtain the services of a race driving trainer: My beloved’s younger brother, who is a proper gear head. He can pop a hood without trouble and fix things beneath it with little to no difficulty. He also owns a very loud red car with funky – oh blast, it’s not spokes when it’s a car, is it? – wheel-applicationy-type things, which he can drive so well that his driver’s license is in a perpetual state of peril.
His car is so manly the motor continues running after the engine has been switched off and the key taken from the ignition, just for a little while. One hour in the driver’s seat of this machine is enough to make anyone grow balls so large you could remove them, coat them in silver and hang them off the rear of the car with pride. And, best of all, the owner of the man-machine thinks the Reasonably Priced Car Project is the very best idea in this world. Making me no longer the sole believer in this grand plan.

(Actually, this is a lie. My sister’s boyfriend also said that this was the second most awesome way to utilise the internet. The first – because of course I asked – is porn, according to him. How could I compete?)

So yes. The proper gear head has offered to teach me the appropriate clutch control and stirring skills I will need in order to defeat the mighty Stephen Fry. I am so set it’s not even funny.

Now, if I can work out how to bring this project to the attention of more people, as the powers of online streaming to the evil world of Facebook are deserting me again, again and again; we should be all good to go and rumble on the track.

If anyone has any suggestions, by all means let me know. You hear that, Top Gear Talent Scout? I’m ready to be recruited now, if it’s not too much to ask.

Learning By Doing (Not Learning By Doing Nothing)

I was told by one of my well-meaning friends to blog more frequently. There has been a lull – not for lack of interest and motivation but because I generally have a problem to stick with things, which is a really bad condition if you are hoping to work in a profession that is self-motivated pretty much all the way to the end. So here, at the office no less, is me attempting to right my wrongs.

I think it might be good to start with a set of justifications explaining why I have spent my non-blogging and non-editing time in a way that is still conducive to the reasonably priced car project

1) For the first time in a very long time I drove a car.

I have a friend staying from Germany and borrowed a car to pick her up from the airport. This was the first time I had been behind the wheel in over a year – and the occasion required me to drive through peak hour traffic in the misty dark of the early shift and manoeuvre through a car park only comparable to at least the third circle of hell. But it went surprisingly well.

I mean, sure, I may have dislodged the muffler when speeding over the ridiculous curb that precedes our driveway but I have since returned the car and there were no complaints.

The actual embarrassing car moment occurred when I took my friend to pick up a mattress for her from the Donkey’s house. The Donkey has a driveway of the spaciousness and navigative ease of a bottleneck. I did get in alright.

Getting out involved sweat, screams, the smell of burned tires, destruction of all kinds of plant matter and finally the admission that I could not reverse out of the driveway of destiny. Instead the donkey reversed. Which I will never live down.

2) I used ‘power steering’ in a sentence.

Yesterday our friend William came for dinner in his new ute, which was great because I have to learn to talk about cars sooner or later – lest they rip me to shreds on television when the time comes to talk shop.

So I practised on William.

“Does it handle well?” I asked. “Does it have power steering?”

“Yea.”

“Did you hear that, baby?” I asked my boyfriend. “I used power steering in a sentence.”

I did get a weakly supportive grin.

“You’re almost a mechanic,” William said.

“Fan belt,” I said. “Wrench. Uhm...”

I did manage to utter another car related term but as I don’t know how to spell it I shan’t share it with you (yes, I still have some measure of shame).

Most depressingly these are the only two moments in the last weeks spent to indirectly further my future fame and fortune. Wow. That is lame.

Which leads to one conclusion only:

It might be high time I got my shit together and started producing something or other. And it had better be outstandingly brilliant.

How hard can it be?

(Theme Song for this weeks endeavours: 'Nothing From Nothing' by the ever so cool Billy Preston. It'll help if I believe it will. Won't it?)