As I may have gloated a few times already, Melbourne isn’t such a bad place to live. It was a healthy 32 degrees yesterday but chilled after a night-time cool change to a comfortable 20ish, meaning today I got to stroll around and enjoy the final demise of winter.
You may have guessed that this was a consolation for not currently living in the commie, pinko leftie police state of ‘right on’ that would have ensued had Labor carried the day. On the walk home to day through what was so nearly almost Stalinist-Russia-on-the-Yarra I was reminded of a story that may cheer anyone here up, even those under the indelible impression that we live in a police state.
A friend of mine over here, lets call him ‘Greg’, is a bit of a fan of chemicals. For a party he was throwing awhile back he decided that making some nitrous would be a grand idea. He put his partially-taxpayer-funded B.Sc to good use, and started sourcing the required chemicals to knock up a few balloons full of the old harmless laughing gas. Now, there’s every reason he could have done what most normal people do and just buy a stack of those soda-stream bottles and get his jollies that way, but no.
You see, ‘Greg’ is what you call a ‘genius’. Seriously. So being a genius he likes to do things the difficult way. He also has a history of mental illness. But that just confirms the whole genius thing.
Anyhow, to make all this fantastic gas you have to have some kind of source for all the nitrogen, and the best is apparently ammonium nitrate. Ok, so don’t quote me on the nitrate thingie, how the hell would I know with my awe-inspiring BA (pol.sci). The catch is though, Ammonium nitrate doesn’t just lie around waiting to be converted into party-starters by itinerant genius’, you have to buy it from the appropriate, regulated outlet.
Where ‘Greg’ got this stuff I don’t know, but the interesting thing is that you can’t buy it in 50g lots, which is apparently all ‘Greg’ needed. Instead, it comes in 20kg sacks. Now, for those of you without the prerequisite B.Sc that is potentially enough nitrous to knock your whole house over.
The next really interesting thing is that to fund the remaining part of his education ‘Greg’ designs and constructs stills for sale on the interweb. These things are easy to assemble, simple to use, and produce very, very strong alcohol for those with a predisposition to oblivion. As you may well have guessed then, the party was to involve huge amounts of nitrous, even huger amounts of home-made moonshine, and was held in the somewhat smoky environs of “the garden”.
I was up to my armpits in a restaurant sink on the night and missed the action, but it was apparently a riot. My housemate ended up bringing home ‘Greg’s’ housemate ‘Denson’, a vocal but hilarious Kenyan bloke over here studying journalism.
Apparently the only reason the ‘Greg’s’ third and final housemate missed out on getting action is that he wandered too far into “the garden” and couldn’t find his way out. Probably the fact that he likes to wear camo gear contributed to this problem as well (as does ‘Greg’. Again, refer to the genius thing).
‘Denson’ was a real laugh, except when you talked to him about something like the Al Qaeda bombings in Nairobi, he hated to be associated with any of that kind of stereotyping of foreigners that goes on.
The final thing you need to know is that the guys lived out in a reasonably conservative part of West Melbourne called Williamstown, and there’s not always a heap of things to keep a bunch of guys interested besides smoking while “gardening” and manufacturing alcohol.
To solve this problem the genius decides to construct a few paint-ball guns, meaning that they can get loaded and have mock-battles around the streets in which they live, and in the park a few streets over.
Were the guys has happy as sandboys? Throw in a bit of playstation and some TV, (not to mention a pub down the road featuring scantily clad young ladies). You bet.
Do I hear you asking where all this is going?
Remember this is only last year, not so long after Bali and 911.
And surprisingly, Williamstown isn’t exactly replete with camouflage-wearing, loaded, face-painted, gun-toting freaks (and skinny Africans) on some kind of weird training mission. So when that 20kg sack of ammonium nitrate, the kind of chemical that gets used to make bombs like the one that levelled the building in Oklahoma City, is correlated with a complaints to the police about the ‘ruckus’ these young men are making, alarm bells start ringing.
Before you know it the boys have “The Boys” turn up in full black anti-terrorism gear, whereupon “The Boys” find not only a genius with a troubled past and a history of mental illness, an obviously dodgy African bloke (“wasn’t that Al Qaeda thing in Kenya?”), a large quantity of potential explosives (ammonium nitrate), bomb-making equipment (the still manufacturing gear), terrorist training equipment (camo and paint-ball guns) and “the garden”.
The genius was required to do some fast talking that night, while the African freaked and pretended he couldn’t speak English, and the other guy just tried to fade into the background.
The three of them are on a terrorism watchlist to this day.
So why do I find this reassuring?
If this was Iraq these guys would have electrodes on their gonads as we speak.