Pay Before You Pump

Now we all know that porn stores differ than petrol stations in that you have to pay before you pump, but maybe there should be rules about lighting up around them too...

Man 'Engulfed In Flames' Runs Out Of Porn Store

A man remains in the hospital with third-degree burns after somehow catching fire inside a SoMa porn booth.

The fire occurred at an adult arcade at Sixth and Mission streets a little after 6 p.m. Police aren't sure exactly how the patron caught fire, but saw him run out of the Sixth and Mission store "engulfed in flames."

Firefighters put out the blaze. The critically injured man was transported to St. Francis Hospital's burn center, police said. More than 90 percent of his body was burned, with the burns varying from first-degree to third-degree, fire spokeswoman Lt. Mindy Talmadge said.

Witness Steve Rintoul, who manages the adult shop, said Thursday that the customer, who is reportedly not a regular patron of the shop, had been watching a movie at the back of the store when he ran out of the viewing booth screaming and on fire.

The store experienced "zero damage" from the fire, said Rintoul, who suspected the man may have lit himself on fire while doing drugs. "I would describe it as a Richard Pryor sort of incident," he said.

The victim was described as an ordinary, "working class, blue-collar type of guy" far different from the rickety Sixth and Mission crowd.

Witnesses who saw the victim ablaze reportedly "sat there and did nothing."

Backing Up The Back Up

The owner of my local servo – bless him – has two blank VHS tapes on his shelf for sale. I nearly bought them myself because I haven’t got the heart to tell him that no one makes so much as a sex tape on VHS these days.

It reminded me of the mega VHS collection that Bruiser and his older brother had back in the day. They were quite possibly the first proponents of what we’ve come to know today as making a ‘back up of a back up’.

The O’Brien boys were before their time when it came to dubbing VHS. They had two recorders and copied every new release they could get their hands on, recording through one player whilst watching it through another. Older brother Terry’s long Sparky apprenticeship was worth its weight in gold the day he set that up, that’s for sure and it wasn’t long before that second recorder soon paid for itself.

Imagine your standard floor to ceiling bookcase full of VHS tapes. They had two of them. All uniformly labelled and sorted in alphabetical order. It was a beautiful sight and it meant that all of us never had to pay for a single rental for quite some time.

I recall Bruiser took to playing one during an English class at school because the teacher at the time had a bad dose of vaginal thrush, or something. I don’t really recall why. But the ironic humour that was the ‘piracy is a crime’ message at the start of the movie was not lost on anyone...

Now these days I have some antiquated standards around the whole piracy thing. It is a real test of character to resist taking up the lads on their many offers of a ‘back up of a back up’, especially with the exorbitant cost of seeing a movie at the theatre these days, but I manage to, just.

But I caved this week when T Bag offered me a download copy of Cold Chisel on CD. I accepted. Sure, I felt bad but the bastards aren’t on iTunes so it serves them right really. I do fancy a bit of The Chiz, especially the song Khe Sanh which details the troubles of a Vietnam vet. You had to be there really and T Bag and I were.

It came on whilst I was driving and shit got emotional. I had to pull over for a good, uncontrollable cry which was awkward because at that point in time I was driving Junior to school.

One medium I am happy to have a ‘back up of a back up’ in is TV. Programs make their money by paid for by networks who in turn sell the advertising time to fund them. So the way I see it is that cast and crew have already been paid for their efforts, so rather than be shafted by the TV channels into watching them when they decide, downloading them is watching them when I choose to.

Even then I’ve resisted the urge to get ahead of the telly on one program; Lost, which comes to a climactic end this weekend and my god has it got me moist with arousal. On one hand I am an excited young man to finally find out the islands secrets and yet, on the other hand, I feel slightly sad that the biggest mind fuck in quite some time is going to be over in just under 24 hours.

Lost has been like the girlfriend that you could never quite figure out yet the sex was just too good to walk away from. At least until you found someone filthier.

Maybe all this talk of ‘backing up a back up’ is not such a bad idea after all. Just imagine if the record company for example, lost their master copy of The Chiz. Wouldn’t they be grateful to learn that I had a back up of a back up that they could borrow? The fuck they would!

I might email them and let them know...

Terry spent the money he made from flogging his back ups well...

The Devil's Semen

It’s not that I’m an angry man – I can be when provoked – but I can’t help but think sometimes that life is just one big joke that I’m not in on.

Like when you rock on up to the servo and the pumps don’t work. Whilst leaving RotoAnus a few weeks ago I spent several minutes manoeuvring the passion wagon between two pumps that simply wouldn’t pump, only for Rangi (his real name) to tell me, when he finally noticed the angry pakeha, that “Sorry Bro, forgot to turn those ones on this morning”. When I finally got the devils semen pumped I found I couldn’t even pay for the stuff, because Rangi’s mate inside couldn’t “take cash on this till, only Eftpos”.

Can’t take cash?! It’s legal fucken tender, you can't not but take it! Clearly I should’ve offered him some blankets, some beads and some glue for his children because that day, cold hard cash just wasn’t going to cut it at BP RotoAnus. Rangi finally fixed me up, on the other till, but I came close to pulling a drive off that morning, I kid you not.

But this is not an isolated incident because almost every week I struggle to find a pump at Shell J-Town that will actually work when you put it on that little clip thing that was made – and I’m guessing here – so that you could leave it pumping, hands free. Now that would be handy, was it to ever work. Sometimes the fuckers even stop when you’re manually holding the bloody thing down so there’s absolutely no pattern to it other than to piss me off.

The guy behind the counter the one time I mentioned it was a great help, he reminded me that I had to pull the lever for it to work which was brilliant advice because up till then I had had it up my arsehole. My bad. But clearly our money is no longer any good to them. First they take away the forecourt attendants who used to pump your gas for you and now they take away the ability for you to actually pump your own gas. The final step will be that the pumps actually takes away your gas by siphoning out what little of it you have left in the tank without you knowing.

How can you spot the ex porn star at the servo? He’s the one who pulls the pump out before it’s finished and sprays it all over your boot.