Part Two, or the continuing tale of how I became a crackpot.

None of this will make any sense if you haven't read part one of this saga, so I do suggest you read it. Or not, if you don't mind whether or not it makes sense. Here's a link http://crackpotschemes.blogspot.com/2011/01/part-one-or-how-i-became-crackpot.html

And now, if you'll take my hand, we can go wandering together through my own little memory lane, it's the early nineties and I'm in my heavy metal bimbo turns earth mother fashion phase. The cow shed is gone, and I've moved back to Sydney, flicking light switches on and off, and marveling at televisions and taps that either miraculously or magically produce hot water.

The Prussian arrives, unexpectedly and certainly unannounced, and he has baggage in quite gob smacking quantities. Both kinds of baggage. He unplugs the phone and gives me the news that the Engineer, whilst spending time in the bush, misplaced his mind and seemed to be having an extreme amount of difficulty relocating it.

The tale he told of my beloved, quick witted friend left me boggled. The Engineer had commenced a relationship, which for some reason necessitated a visit to a counsellor, who recommended a psychologist, who recommended a psychiatrist, who prescribed him something. The Engineer changed, not for the better.

He left his home, and slept in a tent in the bush, he didn't wash or eat regularly. He developed rages. The Prussian and the Smuggler became afraid of the man who was wearing the Engineers face, but whom they could not recognize as their friend. The Engineer deteriorated further. He heard voices in his head, and his speech began to slur. His doctor added more drugs, dulling and addling a brilliant and unique mind.

Then came the rampage. Beserker. The Engineer went on a destructive rampage, physically attacking his friends, destroying their possessions. He drove one car into another until they were both twisted steel, then got into his own car and drove away. They didn't see him again.

The Prussian, wearing his paranoia like an old and favored pair of comfortable slippers, hesitated not in declaring the breakdown of the Engineer to be the handy work of a conspiracy by huge pharmaceutical companies, who use people as guinea pigs.

I was doubtful. Drugs, alcohol and isolation seemed like things that could send anyone a bit nutty. The Smuggler departed for overseas. I thought, perhaps, that this may have been one of those moments when life changes for all, but no one is aware at the time, and my new big city friends didn't find the Prussians idiosyncratic views to be as endearing as I did, and to my great shame, I began to pull away from my friend.

We crossed paths and kept in touch as I got on with the business of being a mother to, now, two young children. My second born son was possessed of radiant beauty and a quick and inquisitive mind. I delighted in his development, in his enormous vocabulary and his almost perfect pitch when he sang Old McDonald.

Motherhood kept me busy, as any mother will know, so I spent less time keeping up with the .adventures of the Smuggler and the Prussian, although I did have a covert meeting with the Prussian to say goodbye when he told me he was going into hiding. We met in a dark corner of an a dingy, old mans pub, having first ascertained that we weren't being followed. I never minded indulging him. He thought an up and coming crime syndicate was after him, as he was a loose end in the Juanita Neilsen case, that regularly sends shivers through the collective spine of Kings Cross crime. Truth or fiction? Who knows......

My children grew, happy and healthy. Suddenly, that all changed. The day my second son received his routine vaccinations, he became ill. He regressed. He lost all speech over a fortnight. It was inconceivable. Impossible.

Doctors visits, frustration, and an inexpressible sorrow now made the previous business of motherhood seem carefree. It was autism. At that time, the internet didn't have a lot more than star trek and porn, but it put the chances of this happening to us at 1 in 10,000. Today the figure is much, much lower, around 1 in 160.

His regression was brutally fast. The possibility of a vaccine reaction was raised early on, then dismissed, so I was stunned to discover that thousands of other parents were reporting the same thing.

The Prussians words started to ring in my head, ominously. I, unwittingly, while trying to find a way to help my son, had spoken against conventional wisdom, and was labelled "anti-vaccination". I had become a crackpot.

To be continued....................
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Part One. Or how I became a crackpot.

I've been a crackpot for many years, and have done many crackpot things as a result. I've lived in isolation, without the modern conveniences that electricity delights us with, without running, fluoridated water, without flushing toilets. Yeah, without luxury too.

That lifestyle was without many other things too. No traffic, no telemarketers, no door knockers, no pollution and no hassle. Or at least a considerable reduction of those things, there was after all, once a whole convoy of cars traveling Ducks Ridge Road, three of them, and some would count that as traffic.

It was in this environment that I first became exposed to views that seemed ludicrous to my ever so sophisticated 21 year old mind. However, I digress, back I go to the gist of the story.
We called our home, Hippy Heaven, although it's official name was Lot blah blah, and our fellow bush living neighbors had failed to figure out how to run a commune prior to our arrival, and were still debating the issue. Not exactly peace, love and mung beans, people.

Rewind. I'm twenty one, pregnant with my first child, and an old friend, whom we'll call the Smuggler, bumps into me on the street of a strange town, far from where we both belong. Over coffee, the Smuggler suggests we move into the cow shed on his neighbors property, which probably doesn't sound as charming as it actually was, in it's home spun, renovated way. Three rooms, concrete building. The greenest hills you have ever seen, and a rainforest in the backyard, there was no way I could resist.

The Smuggler had just purchased a Baptist church, one of those fantastic a-frame buildings that sprung up everywhere in the 1970's, and the plan was to pull it apart and rebuild it on the top of his mountain. He'd paid for his mountain, and his church, with money he'd made smuggling a variety of things for a number of years. At one point in his career, if you care to call it that, he was smuggling diamonds through Vietnam where he became acquainted with the notorious Charles Sobraj, but to spend time with him gave lie to the idea of this man as a dangerous menace to society. The Smuggler was an intelligent man, well versed in many fields, willing to learn and happy to work with his hands. A wonderful dinner guest.

Assisting him in his endeavor to pull apart and rebuild the church were the Prussian, appearing more like an officer of the law than the devoted dissident he was, and the Engineer, who looked like a colonial figure, complete with wild bushranger beard, he drove like rally driver and had the sharpest mind I have ever been fortunate enough to encounter. There was one other man, insignificant, and one I'd rather not spend much time recalling. We'll call him, if we must refer to him at all, as the Dickhead. And me, pregnant, in pink King Gee overalls.

The Smuggler had assigned me the task of de-nailing, and over the next two months I removed every single nail from each and every piece of wood associated with that church. I also bought more overalls. Orange, white, and black floral. I was the very essence of pregnant, demolition site chic.

The Engineer, with his Scottish ancestry, showed signs of being gripped in the fury of a berserker as he worked. He was tireless, and happy to converse as he worked. He explained to me, while sending nine pound roof tiles down a track on the A-frame roof that reached speeds of forty kilometers an hour, how to make land mines, how engines work, how to do so many things, and how so many things operate. We discussed history and literature, society and culture on a building site. We formed a firm friendship.

The Prussian was always coming and going, to and from his many secret meetings. He loved a good secret society. Eccentricities abounded, we'd go to visit people with phones, and he'd pull the connection out of the wall to prevent that Powers That Be from listening in on his conversations. His police radio scanner was constantly monitored, as he was convinced it was the only way to really know what was going on. He regularly conversed with people in positions of authority and influence, or so he said. I doubted it then, but since, some of those names have become prominent. Go figure.

It was these three men, whom I won't dub as wise in any conventional sense, whom I turned to, when it became apparent that I needed to get to the hospital, seventy kilometers away, to give birth, and the Dickhead had not only not put petrol in the car, but spent the petrol money on beer. Being born in a stable may have been good enough for Jesus, but I wasn't having a bar of it. We left my cowshed, stable or what have you, and headed next door.

The Smuggler, the Prussian and the Engineer discussed the dilemma, and then proceeded to siphon petrol out of the available cars there, and made me porridge, on the basis of needing a good meal to supply the energy requirements of the coming ordeal. I finished my breakfast, went to the hospital and had a baby.

With a baby in tow, I became less mobile, so the crackpots came to me, literally. There was a regular parade of dissidents and freaks, left wing, right wing, on a wing and a prayer, the poor and the rich alike, all espousing their own political, social and or religious heresies. I made coffee and cooked meals, and got on with the business of being a mother, but I listened, and there was one central theme to the craziness.

The Powers That Be are not at all cuddly or benevolent. And I got on with that child raising business, while my friends plotted and schemed as the kettle boiled.

Years pass. The Smuggler has passed away, the Prussian is in hiding, he says he knows where Juanita Neilsen is buried, and the Engineer went completely and utterly batshit crazy in the bush.

Strange how the things they discussed around a wood fuel stove, in a humble abode, smack bang in the middle of nowhere, came to pass. I won't bother you with the details, but it's enough to provide me with a nagging sense of distrust in governments, the media, and really big corporations.

Today, there's countless sites, with countless people offering wacky theories for everything. It's a good thing, as whether these crackpot theories right or wrong, those people are thinking, and not just being told what to think. That's why crackpots are dangerous. They think, and that alone vastly increases the chances that one day, one of them will have the correct thought. And maybe even repeat it.

My first born was named in honor of the now deceased Smuggler, and I would like to think that if the Smuggler could see him today, he'd smile........

To be continued..............

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Crackpot Gardens in The Local Community?

Severe flooding has devastated huge tracts of Queensland and Victoria, leading to the loss of lives, livelihoods and homes. Without doubt, this is a national tragedy, and it's going to affect us all.

Food shortages, people. Both long and short term. Oh, sure, there will be enough food, it'll just cost more. Considerably more. And there's nothing we can do but pay more. This time. But, if we change how we do things, we can ensure that next time Australia is hit by some kind of natural disaster, and it certainly will be, we can navigate out way through the mire of food shortages.

It's a simple idea. Every community has a school. Every school has huge amounts of wasted land. Vast expanses of grass that no one is allowed on. Every school should have a huge community garden, which the members of the community can work in (after appropriate background checks), and the produce is available to all members of the community.

The benefits to such a program would be many. School children and their parents would learn more about healthy eating, and as gardening can be hard work, they'd get plenty of exercise. Poorer members of the community get access to free fruit and vegetable produce. Older people get a chance to interact and participate in the community, letting the younger generations benefit from the experience of the older, and hopefully wiser, generations. People new to a community would have a place and a task to aid integration and new relationships in their new community.

Imagine if this had been in place in Brisbane. Many school gardens would have been lost to the floods, but others would have survived, and that food could be distributed to those in the worst affected areas, allowing them to eat, healthily even, without the population resorting to panic buying and price gouging.
The means of survival, food and clean water, have to be localized, so when services break down, as they inevitably do when the proverbial hits the fan, each community has a measure of self sufficiency, and the ability to lend a good Aussie hand to the communities around them that have been hit hardest.

Of course, this means that some will never contribute, but still have access to the produce. I don't have a problem with that. Everyone needs basic food and clean water, regardless of their individual contribution. We feed those in jail. We should feed everyone.Its about the ability to survive.

Please not the picture above, of a spectacularly well built, attractive young woman, is that not testament to the benefits of this simple plan? No? Well, it got you to read it.

Return of the Remote Nazi

I never wanted to become a tyrant. Freedom fighter, well,maybe, but I've always been kind of attached to the notion that I don't have a tyrannical bone in my body. I was...........,wait for it
........WRONG!

Last year I had a spate of house guests. One of them kept changing the channel and turning the volume up to uncomfortable levels. I asked him to cease, desist, quit it even, but to no avail. It was clear that strategic action was needed, and needed immediately.

I seized control of the remote and threatened terrible things to any and all who attempted to learn the ancient art of changing the tv channel, or any other settings, manually. This knowledge became forbidden to all but me, and my first born son in what you could call a nasty case of feudal system syndrome.

Those were terrible times, my friends, and terrible things were witnessed by all. It saddened me to take such extreme action, but our hardships were overcome, and we rewarded with joyous blessings of Doctor Who, and volume that doesn't cause lasting hearing damage.

The time has come to once more fight for my remote, but this time I must fight against my own people. This time, the oppressor of the television is my own children. Never has the need for cunning and strategy been so pressing, never before has my once peaceful kingdom seen such unrest (as long as we don't mention the unmentionable party incident. Any of them)

Hard times call for hard measures, and good leaders need to be able insert cliches, willy nilly like, into absolutely everything, which I just did, so woohoo for me, and I'm completely assured that guarantees my ability to emerge from this battle victorious.

Now, if only I could remember where I hid the remote.
Sent from my iPad, which, by the way is fantastic.

The Hot Squad (or how to achieve world peace through the medium of hotness)

And now, in a blatant attempt to get more people reading my not particularly pithy words of whatever by introducing pictures of really hot chicks, I will put forward the crackpot scheme for today. Do we all have our graphite motorcycle helmets ready? With reflective film across the visor? Good, because we here at Crackpot Schemes and Crazy Dreams don't want any of our l three loyal readers using inferior tin foil hats, cos we really care about your brainwaves. Some more than others.

After hearing reports of looting during the recent Queensland floods crisis, it occurred to me that looting is a fairly tempting to a certain percentage of the population, (I'll concede that the percentage neatly matches the percentage of scumbags in a population) it dawned on me that we,as a society, are using entirely the wrong deterrent in our fight against crime. We need to use HOT CHICKS!

The majority of crimes are committed for two basic reasons, the first being that the criminal wants to take something from someone else, the second being that someone is unbelievably pissed off with someone. Sometimes these two basic reasons converge, leaving society with unbelievably pissed off people, who also want to take stuff that probably isn't theirs. Admittedly, this is a highly simplified breakdown of a very complex problem.

Rebuild Brisbane, anyone?

If the police force was supplemented with really hot chicks, in uniforms so skimpy they breach OH&S regulations everywhere, the crime rate would drop. To prove it- take a good look at this picture of Vicky-Lee Valentino.

Now imagine a criminal, holding up a bank, with hostages, and a good, old, Aussie siege mentality. Traditionally, there'd be hours of negotiations, and a sniper hoping to get a clear shot. My Hot Squad could provide an alternative, and here;s how. Observers have long noticed a link between the placement of naked women and the direction of a mans gaze. Men are almost irresistibly drawn to the sight of Hot Chicks, particular;y naked ones. So, here's the proposed scenario: Hot Squad Officer arrives at scene of siege, removes her shirt and proceeds to attract the attention of the hostage holding offender. He either willingly comes out of the building for a better view, or moves closer to the window (again, for a better view), thus allowing the sniper to get a clear view of him and make the shot. (I'm presuming the sniper is desensitized to the Hot Squad, after months of naked training in the Bahamas, leading to a huge upsurge in snipers). Either way, the siege is over, and there'd be oodles of great photo opportunities.

As a deterrent, the Hot Squad would be more effective than traditional policing, if only because more criminal activities are committed by men who, as we already established earlier, really like Hot Chicks, and most likely don't wont to do anything that might displease said Hot Chick.(as evidenced by all those times your boyfriend ignored you for some Hot Chick)

But we don't have to stop there. Who's going to want to fight a war if they're surrounded by hot, naked, beautiful women? No one! Not even terrorists. No one wants to see awesome boobies get damaged. And nor should they.

There is one drawback. Looking that fine doesn't come cheap, and the Hot Squad would be doing the country, and humanity a favour, we're going to have to pay them well, and this will mean a tax hike, but if we call it the booby tax the public backlash will be short-lived, and it will legitimize the gratuitous use of the word boobies!

Please Note- the Hot Chick featured is Vicky-Lee Valentino, a woman of stunning beauty, inside and out. I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed her photos, but I'm sure you'll all agree that when it comes to Hotness, Vicky-Lee has it in droves. Our security should be in the hands of women like her. And she's the hottest chick I ever met, and I'll add that she's friendly, down to earth and intelligent. And that name was Vicky-Lee Valentino. Spell it right.

Champagne, darlings!, and rhinestones.

I'm afraid we've reached an impasse. Between the flood crisis in Queensland, and the impending birth of the third child of a woman we'll call Mrs Superamazing, I haven't been nable to have any fantastic adventures to share with you. Spraining my ankle probably didn't help either, but we won't dwell on the negatives, instead we' ll rehash an adventure we had previously.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to the first Tuesday in November. Mrs Superamazing and I had a cunning plan to celebrate by overdressing, eating yummy things, and laughing a hell of a lot. We didn't really know anything about the horses running in the Melbourne Cup, and we didn't care. It was an excuse to dress up, and wear silly hats, and Mrs Superamazing and I were more than willing to look out of place as we dropped the children at school, if it was in the interests of having a fabulous time. Which it was.

We looked fantastic, which shouldn't surprise anyone, we are the Real Housewives of Mount Druitt, and as such, it's our job, no, our sacred duty, to look damn fine, all the time. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it, and we don't disappoint.

Before we go any further, I must confess to a small problem. You might not have noticed, but I have a tendency to go off on strange tangents, leading to new, uncharted territories, usually because I've stumbled across something that intrigues, or sickens me. Or both. This tendency led to the subject of our Melbourne cup conversation.

You see, I'd been trolling the Internet looking for free breast implants (a bit like the modern womans search for the holy Grail, but much more important), when I discovered the recurring use of the term "designer vagina", which, I'm sure you'll agree, is the sort of thing that makes you go "WTF? Are you kidding me?", and then you discover that, no, it's not a joke. Though, perhaps it should be.

Of course, once I discovered the ancient art of vajazzling, I had to share the news. I approached Mrs Superamazing and squealed, "vajazzle?", and, in true form, Mrs Superamazing, laughed, and we began to ponder what sort of woman would add rhinestones and sequins to her genitalia. After looking over the women outside the school, we decided that it would be better if we didn't try to imagine any of THEM sporting vajazzles.

Then, we added champagne to the mix, and that made vajazzling seem like a really funny idea. I grabbed a pack of rhinestones, and we started  making the guys very, very uncomfortable. There's a sort of hypnotic effect caused by constant repetition of the word "vajazzle", guys can't leave while the conversation continues, but it's too girly a matter for real comfort, thus creating a time/space vortex from which there is no escape.

By 2pm I was drunk, and my stomach ached from laughter. "Vajazzle!", we cried, as I raised my glass and quaffed cheap champagne, and dissolved once more into giggling fits more suited to fourteen year olds than respectable mothers. I don't know which horse won the race, but I do know it was Jennifer Love-Hewitt, on the George Lopez show, who was the first to mention vajazzling on a televised broadcast, she recommended it a cheer up procedure, after a nasty break up.

We, or at least I, never tried vajazzling, but, without a shadow of a doubt, vajazzling provided me with the most fun I've had on Melbourne cup day, ever, and I doubt I'll be able top it without actually leaving the house.

There's no point to this story. But if you can guess the identity of Mrs Superamazing, you win bragging rights.

Would you like some treason with your antichrist?

Henry VIII of England was a big man, in the physical sense that is, as while not many remember him as an intellectual giant, the big ranga dude was far from stupid. Sure, he didn't have a great track record in his personal relationships, but even with his well documented matrimonial excesses, his first marriage lasted twenty four years, and in terms of Tudor times, his first wife, Katharine of Aragon, was a bit of a cougar, being older, widowed and more "experienced" than young Hal.

After all, she'd been married to his older brother, Arthur, whose existence was dooming Hal to a life in the church. Imagine that. Arthur conveniently died, without having consummated his marriage to the Spanish princess, leaving Hal free to score a wife and her dowry and a kingdom. Catharine was well loved, both as Princess of Wales and later as Queen, known by her contemporaries as a remarkable woman, who advocated education for women, and was lauded by luminaries such as Shakespeare.

We'll cover Henry's excesses quickly, he divorced Catharine, forming the church of England in the process, married the intriguing Anne Boleyn, about whom I could talk for hours, and then beheaded her, married Jane Seymour, a mousy little woman who died after childbirth complications, married Anne of Cleves, declared her gross and annulled his union with her (serves him right for marrying before the first date) which probably suited her fine as she's rumoured to have preferred the company of her own kind, if you get my drift. Catharine Howard (cousin of Anne Boleyn) was a silly little tramp and lost her head for it, Katharine Parr, didn't want to marry Henry, but, whats a girl to do?, and she did out live him. So did Anne of Cleves. Catharine of Aragon died of breast cancer, nine years before Henry, who fell into a very dark mood when he heard of her passing.
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I just love how a row of asterices breaks up a text

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Bet you didn't know our Hal obsessions with male heir was because he thought his line would produce the messiah, now, did you?

Fast forward to the present time, or whatever time we're in. We have Prince William getting married, a direct descendant of Henry VII, through Henry VIII's sister, Margaret, but even though Wills is second in line to the throne, some think his lovely Tudor blood has been corrupted by his fathers German/Greek mix, so entering stage left, we have young Prince Harry, the party loving, swastika wearing ranga, carrying the name that could lead him to be King Henry IX. The last two Henrys' weren't born to the throne either.

If the rumors concerning the legitimacy of Prince Harry are true, and I'm not saying they are, but he got that red hair from somewhere,and anyway, I'm bored, so let me have my flights of fancy, then he has more royal, uncorrupted English royal that is, blood than other person in direct line to the throne. That was good enough for Henry VII.

Now lets get out the graphite motorcycle helmet that works much better than a tin foil hat at blocking the nasty powers that be, and their mind reading whatevers (you knew it had to turn crackpot soon, and I didn't disappoint), and lets very quietly mention that young, handsome Prince William is number one contender for the antichrist. Theres even a picture of him holding a sheep or goat or some other cloven hoofed critter if you're the type of person who demands conclusive and irrefutable proof. And his birthday, summer solstice? Spooky!

We all know that in every biblical apocalyptic scenario, the anitchrist gets his ass kicked by the messiah. I don't know about you, but Id much prefer it the entire apocalypse was downgraded to a right royal family feud, albeit of biblical proportions. So, I'm offering a prediction for you. Lay your bets on Prince Harry for next monarch, because, lets face it, the Brits have been ruled by bastards before, and it simply wouldn't be Brittish to put the antichrist on the throne of England.

So dead birds and floods aside, what really maters is that I got to reuse the dodgy thumbnail of Wills with the satanic hand sign.