October 2014 | By: Scrooble The Scrotable Scribbling, Dribbling Scribe
"A Nice Big Shiny Pupuk Thingo"
So it was machine and metal thingo Blessing Day on Saturday apparently, when the Gods of the Avanza, the Scoopy, the Bemo, the Beer Truck and the Lenovo lap top must be appeased with a bunch of greenery, or something cane and decorative. I guess even the average Orang Barang Bekas could explain the protocol, but I suspect I’m a spiritual retard. I just can’t make head or tail of this stuff. How do you know what to bless and what not to bless? I’m thinkin’ the t.v. antenna and the potato peeler fall into the non-blessable category, the humble tea bag squeezer and even the work horse garbage truck are evidently another couple of candidates for the untouchable social level when Blessing Day rolls around, according to my painstaking observations.
There was a brand spanking new bright red Pupuk making machine right next to where we were parked on Saturday at Sekar Mukti - a real beauty with a nice “Go Green” label on it, sharp rotating blades inside it (the whole impressive contraption made at an address on Jalan Raya Bekasi, Jawa Barat); plus, for some reason that none of us loitering idly around speculating in the car park could fathom, a huge 20 foot in diameter tambourine-shaped silver and white metal object. Maybe it was going to be presented to Mick Jagger on his next marriage stopover in Ubud, to go with his lips. Yet neither of these imposing pieces of definitely machine-oriented iron and steel came within whiffing distance of an incense stick or earshot of a tinkling bell. If anything qualified for a decent blessing, I’d have thought these handsome works would. Maybe they had to be moved to their proper place of employment before getting the vegetation treatment, who knows? They were eventually taken away by several men in a small (also seemingly unblessed) truck during the circle, well after dark, a bit late for any self-respecting blesser on Hari Machine, no?
Lest we stray off paper, there was also a run involved on Saturday, Hared by Sapi Gila and Closet Queen, and announced by Labia as an “Ar’ an’ fifteen’s woor’ on the shoor’, and 2 ar’s woor’ on the long” and started on the top of an elevated paddy opposite the site, marked by a dummy in a red shirt (nobody we knew).
The Disturbed Bovine (and The-Yet-To-Come-Out Monarch) didn’t let us down, it was a very pretty run with more paddy views than you could shake a stick at. Fortunately I found an ideal bamboo length for this purpose, medium length, thin and sturdy, which is still in the back of the car. A major bonus of brandishing it was that Hash Dogs seemed to avoid me like a holiday in Sierra Leone, especially on rice paddy berms. When they did come slightly near, they gave me a wide berth indeed and some very askance and wary looks. It must be embedded deep in the doggie D.N.A. somewhere: “man with stick = not good”. Try it yourself, if you don’t like being shoved aside in mid-paddy by a hairy passer-by who doesn’t announce his intention.
There was however one glaring problem on this run which I’m sure was not the fault of the Hares in any way (“Jaws” music –bum bum, bum bum): Old Paper (insane scream).
Personally, me, myself, I, found myself on it more than once shouting “Are you?” futilely at the top of my lungs to the stern reply of a rustling breeze or a cicada. I finally figured out that the new paper had printed words on it while the old paper didn’t. Once I made this brilliant Holmesian deduction, I spent the vast majority of the run forensically examining paper to the extent that I think I may have read the equivalent of “War and Peace”, or at least “Fifty Shades of Grey”. I’ll sum up the plot of that particular 500 page abomination, which I had plenty of reading time to do on this Hash: A woman constantly tells us what her Inner Goddess is up to e.g. “My Inner Goddess is doing the Margarena”, “My Inner Goddess has just come first in the Kentucky Derby”. “My Inner Goddess has just shit in her tights at the sight of the world’s richest and handsomest man”, who of course is infatuated with the female protagonist of this piece of literary horse pucky, (owner of the Inner Goddess in case you were wondering) to the extent that he actually stalks her. I’m glad I didn’t read it all, I shouldn’t have read any of it.
Where were we? As it turned out the short fell short (ho) of an hour but nobody was complaining. There was lots of wide open space on this run, plenty of airy cat swinging room, which helped because it was plenty warm out there. But this was also offset by some lush and shady jungle excursions – the best of both worlds. The long apparently also had its (“Jaws” music) Old Paper (insane scream) problems as pointed out by an unnerved Mud Flaps and others who came back in after sunset sweating like hogs having taken the “Super Long” inadvertently. Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Just kidding, everybody enjoyed the heck out of both runs, so well done S. Gila and C. Queen.
The circle saw Labia do some shriveling this week, making up his own words as he went, “kelogulation” I believe was one, but he did a spectacular job of both this and virgin slaying, going out of his way to keep the circle entertained and disciplined. Organ Grinder (a.k.a. Sterling Moss or Juan Fangio on a straight or otherwise stretch if you’ve ever tried to keep up with him on the way to or from the Hash) R.A.’d this week with an F1 driver’s approach in terms of machine gun rapidity to icing and down-downing miscreants. He doesn’t muck around in this role and had Agent Orange on ice for flagrant use of the word “hemorrhoids” in his circle, (how dare he?), before you could say “piles”. Jangle Balls then told us a bedtime story or two about Little Hed Riding Rood and tucked us all in, roodly.
To remind us it was Hari Machine, a bellowing Harley took off into the night which we followed out soon afterwards in our own possibly less than sanctified conveyances.
See you at Sabah next week for St Crispin’s Day with Long and Strong and Chippy.
J.B.
