Bob’s Boomerang Boutique

As I was walking the other night, I happened upon a storefront that offered boomerangs. Nothing else. Not even novelty nerf or other foamy boomerangs, just hand carved and painted wooden boomerangs. I was surprised that somebody could earn enough to justify having a store serving only the boomerang market. Most souvenir shops pack a pile of junk into them, like cheap T-shirts that say “G’Day Mate”, or sunhats with hundreds of little corks hanging off them, or snow globes with a model of the Sydney Opera House, or a collector’s plate depicting the America’s Cup win of 1983, those sorts of things. At the very least I would expect a store selling boomerangs would also try to hit the dijeridoo crowd, capitalizing on the aboriginal artifact motif, but this one only sold boomerangs. I was looking to see if there were any boomerangs of the sharpened steel kind like in the Road Warrior when the guy’s fingers were chopped off trying to catch it, but no, only blunt wooden death sticks. Perhaps the proprietor tried some other product but he never got the return he was looking for.

Naval gazing and heroes amazing

So I went for a long walk in the city this weekend. I was checking out the new neighbourhood. Apparently it is a rarity in that it houses really rich people, very average people and some high falutin’ types. Apparently I am only a few blocks from Russell Crowe’s house, but one block from rent controlled low income folk. There’s also a bunch of areas where homeless people sleep at night. It is neat to see homeless walking step in step down the street with their well heeled neighbours, everyone ignoring each other cordially. So I had a pleasant walk around the wharf, and saw a huge naval frigate docked. Up in the cabins there were people partying, complete with loud screaming and music. On the main deck there was a poor schlub sailor who evidently wasn’t invited to the party. He looked a little glum, and of course had to spend his night watch listening to the sound of revelry from up in the officer’s areas. As I walked, this racing motorcycle came around a tight corner and lost his line, ended up sliding past me on his side. I don’t know what it’s called when your tire slips out from under you, but I know when you’re skiing and you lose your edge, it is pretty unpleasant Anyway, I looked on with horror and got ready to help the guy if his torso had turned into hamburger (actually here, it would be called minced beef), but he just got up and surveyed the damage, brushed himself off and tore away. He didn’t even look up to acknowledge my concern. I kept walking along these swanky looking pubs. I noticed that while the clientele all were wearing tight jeans with pointy white shoes, the bouncers had a little more concern for the functionality of their footwear. They were wearing pretty sensible looking boots and shoes, presumably the better for fighting. I know I have often considered the pickle I would be in if I were to find myself in a compromised situation having to fight my way out of a jam wearing flip flops. I walked past the Romanian consulate and then sat down on a bench intent on considering the bats flying overhead. Bats are so cool, and because they’re black, they are really hard to see well. Any bats that I’ve seen before Sydney have been small and frantic, kind of like sparrows, but the bats here are big and graceful, like hawks. They soar overhead silently and are just generally neat. The shadowy nature of the bat had me thinking about superheroes, and how the creators of Batman really hit the nail on the head having this guy clothed in mystery, able to hide in the shadows and soar through the sky (and when they pass the moon, their silhouette makes that cool shape). Although, I never quite understood how they managed to get the bat signal to show up on the sky as it was being projected onto a screen. It strikes me that without anything to terminate the light beam it would just beam into space and you would never really be able to make it out, and of course it could be stopped by hitting a cloud, but then it would only light up that cloud. And come to think of it, I would guess that diffraction effects would serve to blur the edges of the signal.
Anyway, I think bats are really neat to watch, especially because you can never really get a good image of them, sort of like knowing a person: you may watch them and think you see them; you may see glimpses of beauty and glimpses of ugliness but you’ll never see the whole picture. But I digress. Thinking about superheroes reminds me of when my friend Dave went to Manhattan and said it became clear to him how the creators of Spiderman could conceive of a guy making time by swinging on the skyscrapers overhead. If you don’t have a vast expanse of skyscrapers, it doesn’t make sense, but here of course it does. I don’t really see any easily observable crime though, so Spidey might have to resort to Head and Shoulders to get that tingling feeling.