Problem at the Hotel.

Man, you ain't gonna believe this. Remember those jars of Marmold, the artisan Marmite I got talked into buying last time? Well, after I bought 'em and put 'em in my room, I strutted around in town for a while, but it was kind of quiet, so I went back to the hotel to chill with a gimlet and gaze over the beach until everyone got off work.

Like I said, I had made a contest with myself to see if I could chuck the jars all the way to the water, which is about thirty yards from my balcony. I set my gimlet on the railing, wound up, and let the first one fly.

Pretty close -- it hit the sand about five yards shy of the foam line and sent up a nice little plume of fine-grained sand. It was kind of beautiful, in a way -- like the sort of thing a National Geographic photographer would shoot with an ultra-fast exposure: a corona of sand rising up in an amazing pattern as the shiny brown jar, in perfect focus, touches down.

The second jar landed about the same distance, so I did a couple push-ups (bad idea - hella tomato sauce burnin' in the throat) before goin' for the third and final throw. For some reason, I really wanted this one to hit the water -- I guess it was my own small way of conquerin' Australia. I leaned hard into the third pitch, visualized it landin' in the surf, and let 'er rip.

I guess there was a little ledge in the sand that I couldn't see, because as soon as I let go, the grumpy guy from the toast room stood up from nowhere, shirtless, and yawned. My screamin' jar of Marmold smacked right into the side of his body, between the love handle and the armpit, and I could hear the slap all the way from the balcony. Damn did it look like it stung. Before I could figure out what was happening, he turned, fixed his eyes on me, sneered, and started to walk real slow and angry back toward the hotel. I had to think quick.

I ran into town and ducked into a bar, where I ordered a beer real quick and sat in a bathroom stall with my feet on the seat. Unbelievably, the toast dude stormed in and started knockin' open the door to each can. I was trapped.

When he kicked my door and it didn't open he yelled, "CORR! MUST BE BROKEN!" and continued on down the line, kicking the rest of the doors. I nipped on my beer for a while (in my hurry, I had ordered Export Gold, which is horrible) and then eventually poured it directly into the loo, savin' my body the trouble.

It's totally bad that I already have an enemy in Australia, but it's a big place. Maybe tomorrow I'll rent a Caddie and go to Queensland -- since it's their northeast, it's probably more sophisticated, like our New England and Boston and all that. The dude I hit with the jar probably wouldn't go to a place like that.