Signs O' The Times

I woke with half a hangover, knowing I'd find the other half as soon as I got out of bed and stood upright. Stood to reason. I was a third-year PhD student, majoring in home brewing and lab avoidance. I woke to another clonally perfect Brisbane winter's morning. And to a sign. Probably not a sign from God, but a sign nonetheless.

The sign was taped to the door of the room I shared with my girlfriend, with the insulation tape usually used for ball-tampering in frontyard cricket. It was bright yellow and read 'NAILING TOOL IN USE'.

Flatmate to the stars Dr Craigos emerged in Homer Simpson boxers and a white wifebeater, all elbows and afro, scratching himself in concerning places. "Coffee?" he suggested. Then LOLed and ROFLed in one elegant motion. "That's fucking gold," he opined.

"Yes, yes it is," I said, scribing him off my mental list of suspects. It was a short list. Any shorter and it wouldn't have required a list, as it doesn't really matter in what order you write one name down. "Seeds must have made it home after all."

We'd lost Other Flatmate King Of Seed at the RE. He'd fucked off to get money out of the ATM. Given he never ever had any, perhaps he decided to go and rob the Reserve Bank's gold reserves with a bulldozer instead. But at least he'd kept up Chateau Dodgy Evo III's most honourable tradition. Stealing signs while drunk. In his case, he'd had to break into a construction site on his ramble home to pilfer the desired trophy - but it was a gesture from the heart. He never ended up actually getting us a wedding present, but in a way, that was it. About three years early.

The Zen of Drunken Stupidity, as discussed previously, is a broad church, taking in everything from raiding traffic cones from roadworks to hanging trolleys off traffic lights and shoes off power lines. Our speciality was signs. Usually real estate signs, because screwing over real estate agents and cashed-up vendors is, after all, a victimless crime. The property adjoining outs on our usual drunken stagger back from the RE seemed to be permanently For Sale with a local realo we'll call Doug Dickhead. It's possible it remained permanently For Sale because we made a point of ripping out the For Sale signs and tossing them into a nearby drainage channel. Two years before, Doug Dickhead had sold much-loved Chateau Dodgy I out from under us, then encouraged the new owners to jack the rent by 50%. We held grudges.

Still, it didn't necessarily have to be revenge that motivated our drunken larceny. Once, a huge and wordy PRD Realty sign outside a tower block on the St Lucia riverfront got half-inched purely because in our inebriated genius we'd figured out how to fuck about with the letters to make the whole verbose pontification into a tribute to the absent King of Seed, who'd stayed home rather than join us at the RE as he was labouring under the effects of living in a cashless society, as well as a touch of black dog. He was chuffed to bits when we presented it to him. Last I heard, he still had the thing.

We also tried bringing all the detachable roadsigns on campus back with us one night en route home from the uni bar, because they needed friends and we had heaps (our infamous brown couch, long since without a useful spring to its name apart from the few which tried to give unsolicited proctology exams, was bolstered in the base with a No Standing sign and a bus stop rescued from outside my uni college from undergrad in Sydney after a 395 bus had cleaned it up), but uni security took a dim view of our efforts. "Scuse me mate can we ask you a few questions?" "Erm, no." *steps gingerly around seccy van handbrake-parked across driveway in front of him and continues home*

A mate of ours, who I'll call Chris, as that's his name, never limited himself to anything so narrow-focus and derivative as signs. Off chops, he'd nick anything. Not through any sense of vandalism, or kleptomania, or social destructiveness. Just for the challenge.

"Chris, see that park bench?"

"Yup?"

"I reckon that'd look awesome on the deck, eh."

"Shit yeah, it would..."

And Chris, who by this stage of the night would probably have his shirt off and/or had managed to injure himself in some sort of ridiculous and implausible fashion, would be devising a means by which he could get a concrete-and-steel BCC bus stop bench back across a suburb and a half and up a narrow staircase to fit on his balcony. Fittingly, he became a project consultant.

All of this brings us to the Pressing News of the Day. Or as close to it as the Otago Daily Times, the Parochial Voice of the South, is ever likely to get: STEAL A ROAD CONE DAY WILL END WITH CHARGES: POLICE. Yes, the humourless NZ rozzers have given the royal thumbs down to the idea of National Steal A Road Cone Day, and will fine people up to three big hairy gorillas to make their point, or have them thrown in the lockup to be buggered for three months by Big Sione the former boxer, strip joint bouncer and drag performer.

Locking people up for stealing road cones. That's just un-Australian.

The Doctor is OUT.