Violet

Trial By Fire, David Grann. 16,000 odd words of astonishing

The Marriage Cure, Katherine Boo

The New French Hacker-Artist Underground, John Lackman in Wired

Yes, the speed camera bit was my favourite too, juice. I read that sentence twice.

Don't Raimond Gaita and Kate Holden write memoir? Pretty sure neither of them have ever written a novel.

Lozenge - Tell me about it. He thinks they're investments, though, and routinely defends them as such. Digging up the backyard is an investment. Paying what he considers a large sum of money for jeans is an investment.

Anon - Yes, there are high returns on most of what he invests his time in if we're talking about ridiculous stories.

scallway - he's definitely got a bit of Darryl Kerrigan to him.

Ver funny thread. Why is it always the Dads that are at the instigators of these harebrained investments?

About 20 years ago my Dad went to the states for a month or so on work. While there he bought a pair of Levis from a dedicated Levis outlet that in his memory was some kind of ''special authentic Levis shop.''

Up until this time Dad was not a big jeans wearer, in fact it is possible he had never worn jeans before making this purchase. Ever after he would regale us with stories about how his Levis were ''authentic'' ones that he had paid a lot of money for. In reality he paid no more for them than usual and was just oblivious to how much jeans cost.

Anyway, a few weeks ago Mum threw these jeans out because there were 20 years old, full of holes and covered in paint. When Dad found out he got really pissed off and ranted at Mum about how they would probably be worth quite a bit now. Then he rang my sister and asked her if she would put them up on ebay for him.

He also:

Tried to get my Mum to let him dig up their whole huge backyard to plant nuts and berries which he would sell (WTF, do those things even grow in Ballarat?)

Spent quite a bit of time in the mid-eighties dragging me around to pig farms he was considering investing in

Bought an old car he was going to do up and sell but that sat in the shed in pieces for about 10 years until he sold the pieces through the Trading Post

Bought a giant blacksmiths gallows that he was going to ''paint up nicely'' and sell. It still sits in his shed in its original condition.

Heaps of other stuff I can't remember right now

MountainMan has a new purse now. It's made of some sort of lush red fabric. Possibly velvet.

I was thinking about what would make you think you could get away with this. Initially I thought that if you were managing a budget you could probably get the costs through without anyone noticing, but then we're talking about $80K of additional costs. Unless you were moving money around in sneaky ways to conceal it I don’t know how someone else wouldn’t notice. If I were to do this and did manage to get away with the initial purchase my problem would be what to do with all the cartridges. Where do you store 40 years worth of toner without someone saying “what the fuck is all this toner doing here?”

There was a guy 5 or so years ago who defrauded the ABC out of $700K via petty cash claims, work visa cards, cab charge etc. And then a few years ago that woman from ING who defrauded them out of millions that she spent at Bulgari, Paspaley, Chanel etc. From memory she gave some of the money to a shop girl from one of these places for a deposit for a house.

I have logged on just to say that this:

''i'm moving back to sale.''

is an *awful *idea. I won't support it.

Unfortunately I have had no shortage of contact with these types thanks to combination of factors including undertaking a performing arts degree, attending more than one spoken word event upstairs at Bar Open and having a boyfriend who has rented painting studios in buildings infested with these people. Consistently, agonizingly, infernally annoying like nothing else I have ever known. When they’re not cavorting, prancing and flouncing around trying to get attention they’re talking more shit than you’ll ever hear anyone talk. Their “art”, which they actually spend very little time making, is generally atrocious.

Of all the people of this ilk I have known, and there have been many, only one has not been a total tool.

A profie I saw recently:

What are you up to? Being made redundant.

Interests: Having a job.