Some are born great Some achieve greatness
Some have greatness thrust upon them...
...and then... there are others...
Harvie was born into the world upside down, back to front.
and was christened Harvek Milos Krumpetzki.
His father's name was Maciek
A lumberjack with hands as big as shovels
and hair that smelt of pine needles.
His mother's name was Liliana.
A weary woman with lead in her veins from working in a mine.
She was obsessed with counting her
fingers and had conversations with people...
that just weren't there!
The other villagers stayed well clear.
But she didn't need friends,
now that she had her miracle.
Harvie grew strong and healthy
he had his father's ears and
his mother's open heart.
but soon his parents began to notice...
...peculiarities.
he began to have odd twitches and liked to
touch things with his index finger...
...with no reason at all.
When he met someone,
he had to touch them on the nose.
The doctors said he had Tourette Syndrome.
A brain disorder that meant he couldn't
control his impulses.
It was like trying to control a sneeze.
there was no cure or explanation.
At school, Harvie was called a thick.
His friend was Bogush.
Boggush stuttered, and had
problems with his...
...mucous.
The other kids threw stones,
and together they were tricked,
teased and tortured.
until Liliana pulled Harvie from school,
and decided to educate him herself.
although she was a illiterate,
she knew about FACTS...
and filled his brain with all sorts of stuff.
"An ostrich's eye is
bigger than its brain"
"Butterflies smell with their feet"...
and "Elephants can't jump...
...no matter how hard they try"!
Everyday he wrote more and more facts
in a notebook he carried... everywhere!
Fakt 48: Fakts still exist
even if they are ignored.
As Harvie grew taller and stronger,
His mother grew shorter and madder...
...slowly fizzling into insanity.
Often shed mistake him
for an intruder!
Harvie followed in his father's footsteps.
He liked working with him,
but at times felt he needed
to be alone with his problems.
He'd ponder the world beyond,
wishing for things to change...
...and suddenly they did!
He returned to find his home burnt to the ground.
His mother had left the stove burning in the night...
...and Harvie found his parents nearby,
frozen...
...and nude.
Fakt 116: Certain frogs can come back
to life when thawed. Humans do not.
But there was more to come.
The Germans invaded!
Harvie escaped and found himself on a ship
bound for a place called... "Australia"
His world was turned upside down and back to front...
...again!
Harvie ended up in a small suburb called Spottswood.
He rented a small house
with eleven other migrants,
and tried to assimilate
as best he could,
changing his name from Harvek Krumpetzki...
to "Harvie Krumpet"
He got a job!
And many years went by as he saved
his money and tried not to indulge.
Life didnt change much,
but his body did.
His hair fell out and re-grew
on his shoulders.
In the evenings, he'd learn English off an old television
he'd found amongst the rubbish.
He put little curtains on it
and found it a mesmerising source of facts.
The first thing he ever watched was a BUSBY BERKELEY film.
He fell in love with all the bosoms and smiles.
It was so different to the Spottswood dump!
At work, he tried to make friends...
but for Harvie, it wasn't easy...
Harvies skull had split
in half.
The doctors inserted a steel plate between his scalp
and skull and laced it up with 19 stitches.
He was left with a scar that
looked like he'd had a lobotomy.
Harvie wished he had more hair.
He left the dump and tried
new jobs.
He seemed to get sacked a lot.
He didnt know why.
But he was always discovering
more facts.
Rubber bands last longer
if refrigerated.
The Bible was written by the same
people who thought the earth was flat.
And time does not heal all wounds.
One time, Harvie got a job collecting golf-balls.
This is where he got struck
by lightning...
But he survived...
and even made it into the local newspaper!
RETARDED MIGRANT SURVIVES LIGHTNING STRIKE!
Harvie began to wonder how he'd
survived so much bad luck.
Maybe he was like a cat
and had nine lives.
He thought he had about
four left.
Actually, the biggest threat to his daily life
was the twenty-eight cigarettes he smoked.
He developed asthma,
so went and saw his doctor.
In those days the dangers
of smoking were not known.
Dr Greystane recommended Harvie smoke even more.
Smoke is soothing for the lungs she'd say,
jjjust like steam in a sauna!
His asthma worsened... and for every ten cigarettes,
he had to have a puff from his asthma pump.
Years later, his doctor died from emphysema...
...just as the dangers
of smoking were finally revealed.
Fakt 142: A cigarette is a substitute for
your mothers nipple.
Harvie kept collecting facts,
and one morning discovered one about himself...
His steel plate had become magnetised from the lightning strike...
Harvie made the papers...
again!
"RETARDED MIGRANT BECOMES HUMAN MAGNET!"
Harvies optimism began
to crumble.
He thought about fates horrible dealings,
how he felt powerless:
a victim to the world.
He wondered if he should just throw it all in...
"Seize the day, Harvie!
Seize the day!"
"Carpe Diem!"
These simple profound words
struck a chord.
Harvie decided to turn his world upside down and back to front...
again!
He stopped believing in fate
and did exactly what the statue said.
He felt free and alive
and joined a nudist group!
He became a vegetarian and joined an animal liberationist society,
liberating chickens and their eggs!
Harvie didnt just seize the day... he was strangling it!
Fakt 268: There are three times more chickens
in the world than humans.
Despite his enlightenment, physical problems still plagued him.
One of his testicles developed cancer and had to be removed.
But this was when he met Nurse Valerie Burstall!
She had everything he didn't
and was everything he wasn't.
Yet instantly, their pheromones fizzled
together like ice cream and lemonade.
They decided to get married and
had the ceremony in Cancer Ward 9.
Harvie wanted a nude wedding,
but Valerie and the hospital forbade it.
Fakt 372: The trouble with nude dancing is
that not everything stops when the music does.
Harvie had lost a testicle
but gained a wife.
He moved into Vals small apartment with her two cats
and parrot... Brian.
Brian had a parasitic disease,
which made his feathers drop out.
Valerie was constantly knitting
little jumpers to keep him warm.
For some reason, the pets
resented Harvie.
Fakt 586: Love does not conquer all.
Harvie and Val went to bed early
every night and tried to get pregnant.
But there was not enough sperm
in Harvies lonely testicle...
and he was declared sterile.
They decided to adopt...
and came across a little thalidomide girl.
They related to her immediately, took her
home and named her Ruby, after Vals mother!
So little limbless Ruby,
big bold Val...
...and magnetic Harvie
...became a family.
Harvie gave up working and dedicated his
time to teaching Ruby what he knew about the world.
He taught her that animals had rights too...
and to always respect the environment...
...as well as herself.
He told her about the beauty
of being nude...
...and to be never ashamed
of your body.
Everybody was... unique.
Some people had less bits...
...some had more bits.
For every new fact she remembered, he
would stick a gold star to her wall.
She adored her father...
He was full of tricks and was like
having her own private clown.
Fakt 698: The average person uses nineteen miles of
dental floss in their lifetime.
At school Ruby excelled.
She went into university
and came out a lawyer,
then moved to America and started her own practice...
...championing the rights
of the disabled.
Harvie and Val were extremely proud.
On Harvies sixty-fifth birthday,
Valeries brain clotted...
...and she died.
It was such a shock!
She'd never been sick!
Harvie was all alone again.
He had his daughter...
but she was so far away.
He became a hermit and stopped washing.
His mind wandered slowly into senility.
It wasnt long before they
took him away...
...when a neighbor found him
trying to withdraw money...
...from the microwave.
Fakt 804: 42% of the population
cant remember their pin number.
So began the last phase of Harvies life...
...at Pleasant Paddocks..
He shared a room with a man
called Hamish McGrumbel.
Hamish looked like something
off a tin of shortbread,
and had nostril hair that looked like
he was housing a family of spiders.
He was 94 years old
and had given up the will to die.
He also had Alzheimers...
and had recently burnt his ear,
trying to answer the iron.
Harvie and Hamish pretended
to dislike each other.
Harvie often stole Hamish's teeth... returned
them, and then showed him where theyd been.
But Hamish always had his
revenge...
Sometimes theyd sneak alcohol into the home and put on drunken
shows with knitted finger puppets the ladies were making for charity.
Everyone was thoroughly entertained,
but were less than impressed...
...when they found Harvie
the next morning in the corridor.
From then on, Harvie was to
remain clothed at all times.
NUDITY IS STRICKLY FORBIDDEN
BY ORDER OF THE MANAGEMEN Fakt 914: alcohol can cause
drunkeness and nudity.
Often Harvie escaped at night and
took Hamish on animal liberation jaunts.
They'd spray slogans on shop windows...
...and on their way home paint over
teenagers graffiti with their own sayings.
Escaping Alzheimer's patients were a
particular problem at Pleasant Paddocks.
The staff would find them at bus stops,
waiting to go and see relatives...
...long dead.
To solve this, they put an old
bus stop in the homes garden...
...where the Alzheimers could
sit for hours... waiting for a bus...
...that would never come.
Time drizzled on while everyone
sat around and waited to die.
Harvies Alzheimer's began to worsen
as he slipped in and out of dream worlds...
...especially when the local church group visited.
God Is Better Than Football
"God is better than beer"
"God is better than cricket"
Cause Gods there all the year.
He isnt shut on Sundays,
He isnt stopped by rain
Hes better than a captain coach You
can talk to Him again and again and again
and again and again...
"God is better than football"
"God is better than beer"
"God is better than cricket"
Cause Gods there all the year.
After these magical episodes,
Harvie would get extremely depressed...
...and was put on an amazing new drug.
But the only thing that really cheered him up,
were letters from Ruby across the world.
He wished shed visit more...
Harvies mind grew darker...
...and the fire in his belly began to
fizzle. One night, he decided to end things.
But life had one more challenge for Harvie.
On the way back to his room,
he came across a woman he'd never met.
Her name was Wilma. She had a cancerous goiter
and was embarrassed to leave her room during the day.
She was waiting for death
to hurry up.
They sat and spoke...
long into the night.
In the night, Harvie realised
he had some more living to do.
Wilma had decided she needed
no more.
Thank you...
Harvie was going to enjoy what time he had left.
He took off his clothes and went and sat in the morning sun.
It shone on his face
and he smiled for the first time in a long while...
...as he waited for the invisible bus.
He knew it would never come.
But... he didn't mind.
Fakt 1034: Life is like a cigarette.
Smoke it to the butt.