It's almost nearly about to be almost nearly Summer

It's the twentieth of August. This means that it's nearly almost nearly the season before summer. It's never been 2012 and this close to summer. Isn't that exciting? In just ten days it will be spring and thus the beginning of almost almost summer. Everyday it will almost get hot. Swimming pools will almost be used. People will be almost ready to get ready to go on holiday. People will almost start thinking about all the parties that are about to happen. As the season drags on and we get even closer to almost summer, it will almost be exam time. The moment they hit we'll all be thinking about how they're almost over and that it's almost time to almost start planning what we're about to do now that it's nearly summer. Then, after all the almosts and nearlys and about tos, it will suddenly be actual summer. We'll realise we've been sitting in the scorching heat for a week, thinking about how it's almost summer. Kind of like a frog in a microwave.

The best part of almost nearly summer is that winter is almost over; the cold nearly almost over. As the temperatures rise we'll realize that we're starting to put on less clothes in the morning. It's a great time of year.

Except if you're a guitarist in which case you have to deal with your instrument getting fucking scoliosis as the weather changes and having to get an allen key to adjust the useless fucking truss rod in the neck of your warped piece of shit just so you can play the higher notes and then accidentally breaking it. So you take the stupid thing to the guitar shop and they charge you god knows how much for it. I don't even want to find out. I usually just twist the fucker as cautiously as possible before restringing the whole thing. The only problem is that my acoustic's strings are held in with pegs that I used to try for hours to take out with my bare hands before I realised I had a little tool for that which could've saved me a lot of time as well the skin on the tips of my fingers. Even after all that the actual task of restringing a guitar is a pain in the backside because the high E string snaps so easily it's an absolute miracle if you can attach one at all.

But after all that is out of the way, summer the is perfect time to sit down with a cold beer and a slice of lime wedged in the neck, basking in Australia's dry climate and refusing to the take its beauty for granted. In a few years we'll probably be living underground to protect ourselves from what I imagine will be similar to the surface of Venus - science seems to insist we're fucked. But that's okay because being utterly vulnerable is part of life.

So before global warming or ozone depletion or solar winds or whatever kills us according to science/the Bible/scientology/the Discovery Channel/Youtube/the homeless guy on the train takes the fun out of warm weather, make sure you enjoy Summer, and this exact moment. Nothing is as precious or brief as this almost nearly Summer/almost no longer Winter joy.

If the Coen Brothers Made Movies for Children

I would love to see the Coen brothers do a remake of Finding Nemo. Nemo would be caught in a net and his father would go looking for him, just like in the original. But the characters would all have Southern accents. Halfway through the movie Nemo's father and Dory would be unceremoniously eaten by sharks and the rest of the movie would just be people sad because they died. No one would ever find Nemo. The evil little girl with the braces would accidentally kill him and no one would even care. The movie would end with a voiceover by Tommy Lee Jones explaining that a giant oil spill killed off everyone else except for the bad guys, and that world is shit. The kids would love it.

Another movie I'd like to see the Coens remake is the Wizard of Oz. In this version, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Lion don't get what they want because the wizard has been dead all along. Furthermore, it turns out both witches Dorothy killed are good witches and that the other one (played by Jeff Bridges) is actually the evil witch. Right before brutally murdering everyone in Oz, she agrees to send Dorothy home just so she can see that the tornado killed everyone in her neighbourhood. Dorothy turns to Toto and asks "what did we learn?" Toto shrugs and replies "fucked if I know". The movie ends.

Australian Taxation Office

The tax office had my date of birth wrong. They thought I was six months younger than I am, which for some reason meant I had to come all the way into one of their vastly scattered outlets to correct this mistake if they were to process my tax return. I couldn't do it over the phone because that would be too easy: it wouldn't be a proper test of my ability to handle a disorganised bureaucracy without losing my shit. To be honest, I almost did when I couldn't change the "September" in my details to "March" without leaving my house. I felt like screaming at the human/Japanese Tax-bot I was having this frustrating conversation with, but instead I saved it for the five minute intervals during which I was on hold. And when after an eternity of waiting, he told me to make an appointment at one of their shopfronts, I literally ate my phone in disgust.

I was expecting something like that scene from the Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets interrogated by government agents and they put some kind of robot insect in his stomach and his mouth closes up for some reason. Instead it was just a long queue of immigrants waiting to get yelled at because they'd filled out their tax file number application incorrectly. Then there'd be a long argument in Vietnamese or Indonesian. Misunderstandings would ensue. Guns would be drawn etc.

For me, all that was needed was my passport so that they could correct my date of birth. But I wouldn't be surprised if they made another mistake and deleted my entire identity. If that happens I'm taking up a life of crime.