The Shame Files #2

The Time I Sabotaged A Co-workers Health

A few years ago I worked in a CD shop that was a lot less crazy than my current place of employ (which is not hard). Luckily for this blog, every workplace has at least a few of its own quirks. In this place, we had a boss (KM) who would eat other people's food. She wasn't sneaky about it, but she just had absolutely no self control. She would emerge from the back room with a comment like "I don't know whose Tim Tam's are in the fridge but I just ate one". It was quite irritating.

A few other things about KM, just to give you an idea of what she was like:
Her taste in music was ... interesting. She once tried (and failed) to sell a dance music compilation to someone by saying that she loved to listen to it while she was knitting. Another time, she famously said "I really like the new Celine Dion album because it's so easy to listen to".
She was built along generous lines, and had started going to the gym at about the time we started working together. You could see the effort and feel the pain when she ate a salad for lunch, because it was clear that every munch on that lettuce leaf echoed "Kit-kat Kit-kat Kit-kat" inside her head.

So now for the potentially shameful thing: I used to buy junk food on purpose and leave it lying around because I knew she would eat it. Good times.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

I went to a concert the other day and I’ve been putting off putting fingers to keyboard because it provided me with so much material that I hardly knew where to begin. I have placed a restriction on myself in the interests of brevity: (almost) no personal attacks on the physical appearance of the singers. Believe me, this alone should cut things in half. NB This refers to physical attributes, not clothing.

To help with clarity, I’ll be writing this with a simple to follow point system; just think of it as online snakes and ladders.

It was a Christmas concert. -1 point

The musical director – dressed in barbershop quartet meets ethnic hippy cheesecloth – kicked things off with “a few words”. He talked of didgeridoos, eggs, cabbages and kings… I think, but like everyone else in the audience I stopped paying attention after the 5 minute mark. -1 point

The singers emerged. The men all looked like Westpac bank managers and the women looked like a grown up, thrown up version of what my friends and I looked like in our childhood choir. – 56 points

…although where physically possible (in 2 out of 3 cases) they had cleavage on display rather than the deeply hideous things called flounces that we had to wear. + 1 point

One of the women had a really great pair of shoes + 1 point

Now to the concert itself… It’s days later and I’m still in a state of confusion over exactly what it was supposed to be or do… but I can say that watching deeply uncool people (the human version of our old flounces) trying to be cool is a really uncomfortable feeling. It’s like being at a stuffy function and having a twig stuck in your bra that is driving you nuts but you can’t remove it. It won’t kill you but it is AGONY!!! And it makes you squirm a lot. -25 points

It was Mr G does Gilbert and Sullivan Christmas Extravaganza. – 1 point

The idea behind it was to sing carols that related to the 12 days of Christmas, with spoken … um…. bits … to connect it all together. For sheer ambition I am willing to give this points. + 3 points

Unfortunately, the ‘bits’ were not particularly funny (note to the performers: enunciating your words carefully does not equal comedic delivery), and they didn’t really make sense either in combination with the songs or even as stand-alone pieces. – 12 points

When I was 6 years old my friend Ursula and I had what we thought was a fantastic idea that involved dressing up as witches to scare people we didn’t like. Upon reflection, I can see that it was a pretty crap idea. It seems that such reflection was sorely needed yet woefully absent in regard to this concert. – 1 point

There were some highlights amid the mire of confusing, non-funny, forced jocularity. Somewhere around the 9th or 10th day of Christmas, one of the singers (good, hair, bad shoes, cleavage) read out a letter to Madonna (I’m really not sure why). Her accent swung between Jamaican and Irish with a touch of Scots for good measure, but she did say “touching your private parts for vouge-ing purposes” (no, I really don’t know why) for which I must award: +1 point

Musically, it was very clever with a lot of complicated harmonies + 1point

However, much like bestiality or clipping your toenails in public, just because you can does not necessarily mean that you should. The clever obliterated most of the audience’s potential enjoyment of the music. -1 point

Staging, movement and blocking were all very good. +3 points

After the show we went out for a debrief and saw someone with a really great dress +1 point

Final score:
Points Awarded: 9
Points Deducted: 96
Total Points: oh, what's the point of it all? Nobody cares.

My Life and Stuff

I am sitting at a library computer being distracted by a man's heavy breathing. I really don't want to know what he is looking at online... Oh good, now he is merely talking to himself.

Apologies if my last post sounded a little muddled. I was distracted by my little sister playing peek-a-boo with me as I was trying to write it. She is 26.

The Only Gay in the Village and I are now firm friends. This is because at our work Christmas party I told him he needed to use industrial strength eye cream and this comment made him realise that I "have a wit as quick as [his]". Bless.

Either nobody has been arrested outside my apartment for a few days, or I am learning to sleep through it.

I had a dream the other day where I was trying to do a magic trick with gold fish that I was keeping in a hot water bottle but they died. What does this mean?

I had lunch with the Russian ambassador the other day and he gave me three duck eggs and an Ormolu clock. He told me that I would make a brilliant quantum physicist, if only I applied myself to Maths. He also told me that he doesn't think Kurban will last. I tend to agree.

Arrest That Woman!

Some people should not be allowed to dress themselves. I think the argument for a nanny state really comes into its own where fashion (or should I say "fashion"?) is concerned. Clearly, some people are not capable of making sensible choices on their own. I was walking to work the other day and almost yelled out "Oh Jesus, Mary and JOSEPH that is HIDEOUS!!!" to the apparition walking towards me on George St. Luckily for her, my internal monologue was in top form. What was she wearing? Well, I'm glad you asked. It was a 2 piece suit in tiny black and white checks. The pattern itself was ok but there was way too much of it. It wasn't completely hideous but it made the most of all the wrong parts of her anatomy - for example her enormous camel toe.

I found myself thinking that they shouldn't be allowed to sell such crap, but that the problem was really in the combination of garments rather than the garments themselves, as well as the fact that she was wearing the wrong size. There is no legislation against wearing the wrong clothes but just imagine a world where there were. There would be no more skinny jeans on fat people, no more mumble pants*, no more socks and sandals and no more Harry Highpants OR Larry Lowpants.





*Leggings. You can se the lips moving but you can't hear the words.