I am no longer a rock concert virgin. Incubus came down last Tuesday, and I was part of the sweaty screaming throng at their gig. I very nearly wasn’t though.

I’d known about their upcoming arrival weeks and weeks ago. Weeks and weeks where I had the opportunity to buy a ticket. But as we all know, plans made in advance never ever work out. So I thought it’d be better to wait a bit. I waited. And waited. Till the morning of the 16th (Tuesday) dawned, and I realised that I still had no ticket. By which time I started panicking. Dammit, the one time someone good actually makes it down here, I’m too busy twiddling my thumbs to buy myself a seat/standing space to watch them. Bravo.

So I spent the rest of the day hounding ppl I knew for tickets. 21 phone calls and more phone credit than I would care to think about later, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend confirmed that she had 3 extra tickets to sell. She even gave me a discount of 20 bucks for each.

At 6 sharp, I was at the predetermined meeting point waiting smugly for my cheaper-than-almost-everyone-else’s-ticket. At 6.15, my smirk disappeared. At 6.30, I was frantically trying to call the damn friend of a friend (repeat twice). But I couldn’t get through. Then my phone died. I was going to have a heart attack. I had two other friends depending on me for tickets and they had been waiting in line to get in two hours ago. I was contemplating ripping tickets out of some guy’s hands and pulling his pants down so that he wouldn’t be able to pursue me as I made my escape. But then, a kind (more alert) soul informed me that tickets were still being sold at the counter. Phew. Bought ‘em, cursed a horrible gruesome death on the friend (‘of a friend’ ×3), and ran off to deliver ‘em to impatient-friends-still-in-line-and-choking-on-ciggie-smoke.

An hour later, we were in and submerged in a mass of die-hard headbangers near the stage. Being vertically-challenged, I couldn’t see anything and breathed in nothing but B.O. and body heat of ppl taller than me (my head was situated at their general armpit level). I couldn’t even move. When the opening bands came on another hour later, I still couldn’t move. No, wait. I was moving. But not of my own accord. Everyone was pushing and shoving each other. Something had to give. And it did. Someone fell, and like a stack of dominoes, so did everyone else around him/her. Including me. This wouldn’t have been so bad...if it weren’t for the sweat-drenched, rugby-sized guys on top of me. Oh sure, go ahead and stomp all over me when you get up. No no, I don’t mind. What’s a broken rib or two?

Just before Incubus came onstage, I threw in the towel and wriggled my way out to the back. Where I discovered that the air was much sweeter and the view was much better. All that monkeypoo business for nothing. Incubus had better be worth it.

And they were. They were brilliant. I could understand why a girl in front was waving a pair of knickers in the air. At the back, getting splattered by sweat drops from the hair of a headbanging fan nearby, I finally understood what the draw of a rock concert is. It’s not the insanity of the mosh pit; it’s not the beer being flung around. It’s not even the band…alright, maybe it partly is. But it’s also you and hundreds of others having the time of your lives. It’s letting go and going wild and to hell with anybody who thinks you look like a jackass flinging yourself around like that. But you need good music to get the mood just right. And Incubus delivered.

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I’ve been feeling rather paranoid lately...even more so than I usually do at any rate. I've been seeing Zookeeper henchmen everywhere I look. Behind lamp posts, up in trees, in the toilet cubicle next to mine (I took a peek, just in case)...you get it. To give you an idea of what sort of people these henchmen are, they’re the sort who wouldn’t think twice about sticking zebras in a huge meat grinder just so they can sell ‘em off as Exotic Meat Sausages. Add evilknievel, car-crashing, tree-killing buttmonkeys to that, and you’ve got one very jumpy zebra. I’ve barely any stripes left, most of the black bits went white with fright long ago.

So I thought I’d leave instructions for Things to Do in the Event of My Death. I’d planned them out some time ago, but it’s always good to have a copy lying around for someone to carry them out. Anyhoo, here they are.

1. Locate and capture alive the sadistic animal-haters who had me chopped and minced to death.
2. Prepare eight pieces of rib-eye steak.
3. Combine ½ cup soy sauce, ¼ cup red wine, 2 cloves garlic (crushed), 2 tsp grated green ginger, 2 tbsp brown sugar and 1 tbsp barbecue sauce.
4. Pour mixture over steaks and marinate several hours.
5. Take steaks and rub vigorously over bodies of sadistic animal-haters.
6. Stuff remaining pieces into body orifices of sadistic animal-haters, the further in the better.
7. Gain access to cage filled with hungry grizzly bears.
8. Serve while still alive and wriggling.

Note: Serves 3 adult hungry grizzly bears.

In the event that I am not ground to sausage bits but rather left to die a painful miserable death, leaving behind a relatively intact carcass, here’s my list of Things to Do with My Carcass.

1. Cremate it.
2. Invite as many people as possible to a funeral and later, an elaborate lunch gathering with a bland soup starter for friends, foes and family.
3. Take ashes of one Dead Zebra (that’s me) and empty into randomly selected salt and pepper shakers.
4. Set S&P shakers on tables.
5. Have a quiet chuckle every time someone mentions how much he/she misses Dead Zebra and how he/she wishes DZ could still be with him/her.

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I want to go to Nepal.

I want a reason to buy hiking boots.

I want to go for endless hikes till I wish I’d never bought the damn hiking boots – at least I’d have an excuse to roll over and surrender.

I want to buy things made of yak hair.

I want to find yak hair in my food...hang on, I don’t want that.

I want to trek 4,058 metres above sea level.

I want to know what it feels like to be half dead from altitude sickness.

I want to see a Lama (religious teacher, not animal – that’s Llama).

I want a glimpse of the snow on Mt. Everest.

I want to eat a yak...or part of one.

I want to freeze till my hooves drop off.

I want to gape and gawk at the weird things people do there, then again that happens all the time at home – whenever I glance at one of my sisters.

I want to be able to brag to my friends that I stepped in yak poo.

I want to scrape it off my boot, dry it, and bring it home for a conversation piece.

I want to be an Ian Wright wannabe.

Have you been to Nepal?

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The lawnmower went chop chop chop
And a froggie went hop hop hop
But she hop hop hopped too slow
And it chop chop chopped her toe
As her toe flew off plop plop plop
She cried out loud stop stop stop
But chop chop chop said the blade
And lop lop lopped off her head
Down did her body flop flop flop
No more would the froggie hop hop hop

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I am alive. Barely just, but alive. I’ve just had a month’s break from coll. A month which was supposed to have been spent lolling about lazily at home until I took on the shape of a glassy-eyed dugong. But the only word I can think of to best describe the last two weeks is…traumatic. Pure and simple torture.

Let me explain. My favouritest aunt thought that I might have been perhaps not too happy with my job at the skatepark, on account of my wages being enough to just sustain a family of four hungry gnats. So she ferreted around and found me a temp position in a bank. Well, that’s very nice of you, dear aunt. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already got the tummy, and my legs are starting to resemble dugong flippers. Another week plastered to the couch should just about do it.

So my aunt left and I stroked my dugong whiskers happily. Unnecessary hard work gracefully evaded. Or so I thought. My dad got wind of it and one hour later, off I went to inform my aunt that my dad had changed my mind.

I’m a silver lining type of zebra. How bad could a job at the bank be? Maybe a robbery would occur during my time there, complete with ski masks, guns and hours wishing you’d gone to the loo earlier. Or I might meet someone secretly embezzling millions from the bank, blackmail said person and convince him to buy me a Jag E-type for Christmas.

So off I went comforted to my first day of bank work. And was promptly directed to a tiny table with a computer (without online access) and stacks of forms barricading me from the exit. I was to be a computer desk monkey. I didn’t even have a phone or a stapler. They were generous enough to supply me with a pencil, but they’d forgotten to sharpen it. I wouldn’t need it tho, they told me. All I’d have to do is close and set up credit card accounts of people with more money than me. Nothing to it. I could take a break when blood from my stumps started smearing the keyboard, to prevent it from short-circuiting. In the event of which they’d deduct the cost of the keyboard from my paycheck.

Two weeks later, I slammed my head through the computer screen, walked to the manager’s office and politely told her through the air vents of the monitor that she could find some other masochistic jackass with a penchant for papercuts to be her desk monkey. And with that, I was FREE. Never had the sunshine shone so brightly, never had the breeze breezed so breezily.

My dad told me that I would learn much from the bank. He was right. I learned that I would never ever ever work in a bank again. Unless it was to rob one.

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Having a swingin' good time in Melbourne!

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It was meant to be a nice relaxing drive home. There I was, cruising along the highway at no more than 30km/h above the speed limit. Our Lady Peace blaring into my ears and the sun flashing into my eyes. Except the last I checked, sunlight wasn’t blue.

I glanced at my rearview mirror and my heartbeat skipped. And skipped yet another time like a giggling schoolgirl. Because fast gaining on me, was a bright white cop car with its lights screaming blue.

I panicked hard. Was it because of the handphone-bearing yuppie who sauntered across the street too slowly? Was his arm sticking out of my car boot? Was it godforbid feebly waving to the cop car in desperation? Dammit! I should’ve disarmed (literally) him before I shoved him into the boot. Or at the very least, I should’ve backed over him and mowed him down again just to finish the job.

Excuses were racing their way through my mind. "My friend had too much to drink and now he’s off his face. I’m just giving him a lift home. In the boot? Oh yes, I didn’t want him puking on my leather seats." Or "I saw the poor guy splatter over the windshield of a Beemer. So I thought I’d take him to the A&E in the boot, to avoid misplacing any loose organs." Maybe even "here’s 50 bucks. You saw nothing."

Yeah, the last one would probably work. I took a deep breath and started to slow down. Cuz everyone knows car chases always end up with the chasee crashing into a barrier and attempting to escape on foot before running into a civic-minded citizen in his Landrover.

Then I noticed that blue lights weren’t flashing in my rear-view mirror any longer. In fact, they were now behind a tarp-covered truck, yapping away at its heels like a neutered terrier with something to prove.

What a relief. I sped off home with the dead yuppie bouncing away in the back. When I heard another thump and felt the familiar bounce of a body hitting the car roof. I stopped the car and got out to check…and my pulse went back to normal again. It was just some little squirty boy on a tricycle. At least I think it was a boy, I couldn’t tell anymore. No matter, I’d probably done the parents a service.

And I drove off whistling. Leaving Goodyear trails of gore and twisted metal in my wake.

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It’s a well-known fact that rock stars are a sexually active lot. One might argue that this shagathonic tendency of theirs is simply nature’s way of increasing musical talent in the human gene pool. If this be the case, it’s no wonder that where a rock god such as one David Eric Grohl is concerned, thousands of groupies are lining up for copulation privileges.

But for every tumble that Grohl lands, there is always the possibility that something unplanned for might occur. Something that only makes an appearance nine months later. That something is a Grohlaby. Brought into this world through special circumstances (e.g. drunken orgies, faulty rubbers), a Grohlaby is a miniature rocker-to-be with Grohlic talent hidden somewhere deep beneath its folds of baby fat. Sadly though, this unique breed is in danger. Lacking a father in their lives, these love children may never discover the immense well of talent lurking inside just waiting to be released. Of course, this is through no fault of their biological father. Such a glorious god as Dave Grohl cannot be expected to be tied down to one mate, thus limiting the spawning of his seed.

And so, the G.R.O.S.S. was born.



We here at G.R.O.S.S. aim to protect and care for these gems which have been gifted to us. This is achieved by providing the best possible environment for a Grohlaby to grow up in, one with the proper care and guidance that befits such a child. As soon as the birth of one of these is detected, the Grohlaby is tracked down and tagged. A radio collar is also attached to the child so that its progress can be recorded. Later, at suitable intervals in the Grohlaby’s life, certain elements will be introduced to aid the molding of a rock god. These elements can include various factors like an idol/father figure, bandmates, an angsty childhood, and other such influences. In some cases, the Grohlaby is even retrieved and raised in captivity. Only when conditions improve to become more suitable is the Grohlaby released back to its natural surroundings.

Evidently, the costs of our efforts are quite substantial. As a non-profit organisation, we rely solely on donations from the public to help us fund our operations. So do your part and be a friend of the G.R.O.S.S. today.

Both cash and cheque donations accepted.

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