"Adelaide: No Convicts and No Fruitfly"

I am gearing up for a very exciting trip down to the land of no convicts or fruitfly. Tallboy's family are going to take me to a desalination plant. Details to follow.

Mobile Guitar Players: On The Move

On the weekend, Tallboy and I saw another mobile guitar player, but this one was about 3 suburbs out from where I live so I am hopeful that it is a sign they are migrating away from me. Today, I saw a small child walking down the street with a cardboard box over her head. It filled my heart with joy to know that the very young are able to make their own fun without the use of guitars.

Wilderness Society People Are ANIMALS

Scene: King St, Newtown. Felix feels an overwhelming urge to re-visit her breakfast in reverse, so sits down on a low brick wall and takes some deep breaths.

Unidentified Male: "Are you OK?"

Felix: "Yeah, I'm fine".

Unidentified Male: "Have you heard of us before?"

Felix: [looking up to see unidentified male is holding a clipboard and wearing a Wilderness Society t shirt] "well actually I'm trying not to vomit so I guess I'm not ok"

At least that got rid of him.

Handy Hint For Paul Wilson

Hi Paul, you seem exactly like the type of guy who would google himself on a weekly basis so I have high hopes that you will stumble upon this blog and although I will have to forgo anonymity I think the sacrifice will be well worth it. First of all, I should clarify here that the Paul Wilson I am talking about is the author of that famous tract "The Little Book of Calm" (as featured in the first episode of Black Books when Manny accidently swallows one).

Paul, when you are in a shop, it really isn't necessary to try to impress the people who work there. Even if you are in a shop that sells a product you create, like if you are an author who finds himself in a bookshop. Generally, people in retail are not that interested in their customers (A good rule of thumb to remember is that people in the service industries are paid to be nice to you. This should clear up a lot of things).

Beyond the fact that I was already pre-disposed to not being all that interested or impressed by you (see above), your attempt was really, really abysmal. Asking me if Bryce Courtenay has a new book out only so that you can then drop into the conversation "oh, he didn't invite me to his launch. I wonder why that was" was very clumsy of you. Obviously, Bryce Courtenay thinks you are a nob of no consequence which is why he didn't invite you to his latest book launch. Name dropping authors is kind of a waste of time with booksellers, and when you name drop and then proceed to reveal that you actually barely know one another is... well... in the words of that famous philosopher, Shania Twain, "that don't impress me much".

Nob Alert: Mobile Guitar Players

I don't have a problem with people playing the guitar (unless it is John Denver songs) but why do they have to do it while walking down the street? I have seen this on not one but two occasions in the past week and both times the young men in question looked like they were high on ridiculin. How will they ever be taken seriously? I hope they don't think this is the way to behave if they want to attract a girl; even if the girl in question were partial to fellows of a mildly artistic bent they would never be able to bring him home to Mother. As we all know, this is actually what all women look for in a man: a nice, safe and boring accountant type with round glasses and a side part. I have even tried to sell Tallboy as this type to my own mother by having a long and involved phone conversation with her about the fact that he wears shirts, with collars. She was impressed. But I digress...What is wrong with finding a nice spot in the shade of a tree and sitting still? It's enough to give the watcher indegestion. I am worried that this is a trend on the rise.

Even more worrying is that the second hairy, hippy reprobate was walking along, strumming away in the rain. Seriously.

Dear Valerie

Dear Valerie,
Hi! It was really nice to meet you while I was searching for a new flatmate. I thought we would get along fine as flatties, but I wasn't expecting it to be some kind of whirlwind flatmate love like I've had in the past. Basically, I guess you met my minium criteria: able to construct full sentences in conversation, no discernable psychotic tendencies, demonstrated familiarity with the procedures of washing dishes and general light household duties, and a slight display of quirky personality (as evidenced by your spider earrings and tongue piercing).

What I am trying to say is that I am not really all that upset if you don't want to live with me. It is not going to come as a personal blow to what you for some reason seem to imagine is my fragile emotional state and heightened sense of feeling rejected. Or, to put it another way, you're not that great. Also, I think if you moved in I would keep getting Amy Winehouse in my head singing that song Valerie which would get pretty annoying after a while.

I just wanted to write you a letter to fill you in on one of the most basic rules of flatmate finding ettiquette because you seem to be unaware of it. If you don't want to live with someone there is absolutely no need to keep stringing them along with "I will definately let you know tomorrow" type messages. All you have to do is think up a small, inane excuse and go with that right from the start. Some good, solid examples are: "you don't have a car space" "the room is too small" "I would prefer to live in a different suburb" or "the rent is too high". Any of these are fine and as you can see, they are completely impersonal. Everyone knows that they are all just platitudes and they really mean "I found someone I liked more than you" but the thing is that we all do it. Or you could take the approach of Linda who, while barely able to speak English, managed to let me know less than 24 hours after we met "thank you but I do not take the room". See how easy that was? she didn't even bother with the platitude!

Anyway, just letting you know that I have retracted my offer to have you move in with me because your car space is too small and I want you to live in a different suburb. Good luck with your search for a home,
Reagrds, Felix

Panic Stations!!!!!

I was just in a public toilet looking at myself in the mirror and I realised that I have one ear bigger than the other. I am a mutant! For about 17 years I have been wearing earings that look lopsided because they have been hanging from ear lobes that are at different heights due to the disproportionate size of my ears. I can't believe that NOBODY TOLD ME!!! I vow to spend the rest of my life tilting my head ever so slightly to the right in the hope that it evens things up a bit.

My sense of self has been so shaken that I'm off to write some bleak, stark existential poetry and drink some absinthe.

Random-a-rama

Juicebar and I tried to go furniture shopping the other day but things did not go exactly according to plan...
The shop was closed. It rained. Google maps auto-corrected us incorrectly and tried to send us to random places. We also managed to get lost a few times without the aid of Google maps. But despite such setbacks, the day was not a complete loss: I bought lots of random confectionary and foodstuffs, and a tin of Non-stick Spray-On Me.

How did this happen? I metaphorically hear you ask. Well I am going to tell you (non-metaphorically). We eventually found a furniture shop to look in, and just like in the movie Felix, Zosia and Juicebar in Wonderland, there was a supermarket on the bottom floor. I bought myself some Foul Madames because my supplies are running really low at the moment.



I also bought the afore-mentioned Non-stick Spray-On Me. It is actually cooking oil with my name as the brand but since my blog is semi-anonymous I can't really tell you what that is.

In other news, I am stuck in a loop of governmental proportions. Because I was unemployed for a couple of weeks (or "flexi-ployed" to use the PC term) several months ago, I now have to attend various meetings to prove that I have a job, in case I change my mind and suddenly want to not have a job again... or something... So although I concede that these phone calls and meetings are an utter waste of time it still surprised me yesterday when I was asked by someone who is supposedly qualified to help me find a job (should I want her to) how to spell PhD. Uhhh... yes: she asked me how to spell a three letter acronym.

Career Change

I’ve decided that I am going to become an author. Here are my October New Release Titles:

1001 Animal Whisperer Stories To Read Before You Die

1001 ____-gate Scandals to Uncover Before You Die

1001 Vampire Stories To Get Sucked Into Before You Die

1001 Palliative Care Treatments To Undergo (Just) Before You Die


And if you are the person who stole Bilingual Jane’s cracked pepper at work then GIVE IT BACK YOU GROTTY LOWLIFE POO-BUM ARSE-WIPE FOOD SNIPE! Honestly, what kind of person would steal a condiment*?

*Obviously, I don't mean people who take little poackets of sugar from cafes because... like... everybody does that, right?

Cripes!

Obviously all my recent yearning to be a secretary has left some lingering anti-feminist atoms in my body because a really scary thing happened the other day: While I was cooking dinner, Tall Boy changed a light bulb. It was so... domestic. Once we realised what we had done we completely freaked out. He quickly arranged some pink flowers on the table and I emptied the bin to be on the safe side.

Dear Clyde,
Thankyou for reading my previous letter and taking the comments on board. I hope you don't mind if I point something out to you? When I asked you to stop talking about your blisters, it wasn't really my idea that you start talking about your veins and surgical stockings instead. Perhaps we could avoid discussion of any health related matters at all until I leave.
Thanks again, Felix

How to Choose?

Guess what kids? I have found another crazy place to work (it might be sane but I am not expecting anything much these days)!! The only problem now is that I can't choose which resignation letter to use...

Dear Clyde,
I am writing to inform you that I have decided to resign from Crazy Town. The reason behind my decision is that I can no longer stand to listen to stories of your blisters or your grandchildren.
Sincerely, Felix

Dear Clyde,
I regret to inform you that I am no longer able to work for you at Crazy Town. I don’t have a really good reason for my decision to resign, except that I am an ungrateful churl who is selfishly ignorant of all the generous support you have shown me during my time as your slave – er - employee. I would like to take this opportunity to note the numerous times you (an innocent little lamb of a human being who only wants to help others) have been betrayed in such a callous and unfeeling way. For someone as astute, efficient and hardworking as yourself, it really is a mystery that this keeps happening to you. I would like to wish you all the best for the future of your business but I suspect that you will end up employing somebody else who will ultimately stab you in the back* for no discernable reason.
Reasonably sincerely, Felix

*”stab you in the back” being a synonym for “get another job” and also “use the sticky tape”, “forget to initial something”, “forget to empty the bin”, “send a text message on company time”, “not work fast enough”, “take a dinner break” , “breathe in the wrong way”…

Dear Sidekick of Clyde,
I am writing to inform you that I am resigning from Crazy Town. There are a number of reasons behind my decision but the main one is that I dislike you so intensely that I can hardly bear to be in the same room as you without shuddering. Please take this personally. I know that you take your role of Ogre/Manager very seriously and you do a really good job. You may or may not want to keep this up. I wish you a frustrating and mediocre future career, and hope to never see you again.
Regards, Felix

Dear Clyde,
I am writing to inform you of my decision to resign from Crazy Town. It has come to my attention that there is no such thing as a sarcasm font. I have decided to dedicate my life to developing one, and hope that you may feel proud that you were in some part an inspiration to the development and creation of this important work.
Regards, Felix

Things We Need More Of In This World:

Giraffes in leather chaps

Bilingual Jane Strikes Again

Bilingual Jane once had a housemate with extremely bad breath. It was so bad that, according to Bilingual Jane, it smelt like a dead animal. She didn’t realise for ages that it was his breath causing the smell because when he yawned or laughed it took a while for the smell to waft across the room. When people came to visit she mentioned the horrible dead carcass smell and often the visitors could smell it too. She had people hunting all over the apartment for the dead animal until one day it suddenly clicked. She had no choice but to back-pedal, saying that she could no longer smell the stench of rotting rodent flesh, because there is no nice way to say “when you open your mouth I can smell dead bunny rabbits”.

Jobless

So once again I am looking for a job in a sane workplace. I don't want to work anywhere that is "dynamic" (ie "we are a rapidly expanding, dynamic cardboard box factory") and I do NOT have a "can-do attitude". Also not keen on "vibrant" (to describe either me or the prospective workplace). This pretty much rules out everything.

Knob City

As previously mentioned, when it comes to putting something funny written by someone other than me (and without their knowledge or permission) on this blog I am an ethics free zone. This arrived in Crazy Town workplace the other day (names of people and places have been changed).

Dear Clyde,
In making this approach to you, I am shamelessly exploiting the fact that you know my father, Well Know Australian Author – and, indeed, the fact that I was a (very) young customer of your store aeons ago.

I have recently graduated from KA (Knob Academy) and am now embarking on my career as a professional Knob Head. Like all embryonic stars of stage and screen (!), I need a job. I am about to move into Crazy Town West and would appreciate an opportunity to discuss with you the possibility of casual/shift work at Crazy Town.

While my specific experience in crazy bookshops is brief (a stint of several months over Christmas in the book department of David Jones), my experience of customer service is quite extensive. I have worked to rigorous standards of customer service in a variety of settings (from hospitality to guided tours to office reception) – my resume, attached, has all the details. I am also passionate about books and literature, and indeed spent three years completing a Bachelor of Arts degree at Sandstone University (graduating in 2006) before training as a Knob Head.

I shall phone you in the next couple of days, to see when it might be convenient for us to speak. I look forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,

Knob FitzAustralian Author

PS Well Known Australian Author sends his good wishes to you and Major Dick.

Swizzy Tim and the Vom Vom

A tale of love and hate

My dear friend Swizzy Tim likes to express his gut emotions. Here are two tales about him (the first has become lore, and the second only happened last month):

1.
Swizzy Time and NLJ were mates in a casual sort of way until one night when their friendship reached a new level of closeness. We were having a house party at the tower and Swizzy Time had been drinking rather a lot. He was with a group of people in NLJ’s room, admiring NLJ’s keyboard* when all of a sudden his eyes glazed over, he began to look unwell and NLJ had time for nothing but to cup his hands under the ensuing remnants of Swizzy Tim’s dinner, thus happily saving his keyboard and cementing a lifelong friendship with Swizzy Tim.

2.
Swizzy Tim was recently embroiled in a love triangle, which ended as soon as he found out that he was embroiled in a love triangle. Heartbroken and bitter**, he spent the evening angrily strumming his guitar *** and drinking a combination of red wine and whisky.

(Swizzy Tim has asked me to advertise all salient details like name, address and physical description of the She Devil but I’ll just say her name starts with R and she works in Customer Complaints for an airline. If any of you are time-rich enough to track her down and slap her in the face on behalf of Swizzy Tim for instigating the love triangle saga I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun by making it too easy.)

So She Devil R. came around that night to be verbally abused by Swizzy Tim. She went upstairs to his room while he spoke briefly with his housemates. He then followed her upstairs to find her lying on the floor. She sat up, and he sat down next to her and … spewed all over her, which is the last thing he remembers of that night. She is now known by all and sundry as Spewy.

*I know that sounds like a euphemism, but it isn’t.

** For about a day and a half

*** Again, not a euphemism

Crazy is the New Crazy

My workplace is like being stuck inside a Greek myth. There is an endless repetition of pointless tasks to be performed, and no matter how many of them you do, there will be the same amount or more waiting for you at the start of your next shift. I often feel like my stomach is being picked out by vultures too. Obviously this is one of the myths where (rather than something mighty and heroic like a horse) Zeus chose to turn into something idiotic like a stoat that is of absolutely no help in getting me rescued at all.

Meh.

It turns out that my new workplace is even crazier than the old but I think it is actually beyond the point of being funny. Or maybe I am beyond the point of being amused. I keep getting told off for things that I may or may not do in the future. At least in the last place if I moved the sticky tape I got yelled and that is fair enough in Crazy Land. I mean, I did move the sticky tape. Now I get told off for the possibility that I may be considering moving the sticky tape sometime next week.

Instead of The Eye I work for an orangutan. That is to say, I work for "a large, long-armed anthropoid ape".

The Orangutan is married to another Major Dick who could be the first Major Dick's twin brother.

End of Chapter One, by Sick To Death of Crazy (filling in for Zosia)

Top 5...

…things that have been annoying me this week:

...or to be more precise: things that were annoying my about 3 weeks ago when I started trying to write this post:

1. People who own shops (and have done so for many years) but pronounce Eftpos “eff toss” which is rather rude when you think about it.

2. Alannis Morisette: Rain on your wedding day is only ironic if you are marrying a drought stricken farmer who hasn’t seen rain for 5 years and it rains so much the car park at the wedding reception place gets flooded so your beautiful white dress gets very muddy, and you can’t rinse it clean because there is no water in the taps due to the extreme severity of said drought.

3. Cat Stevens.

...As you can see, I only came up with 3 things for my list. The problem is that I have been in far too good a mood to be annoyed lately which is Bad News for Blog. The reason for the good mood is that I have found myself a Tall Boy. This is perhaps somewhat ironic (Alannis, are you paying attention?) because I have been looking for a tallboy. Maybe it's not ironic, maybe it's just in the Bad Dad Joke category. It's hard to tell because definitions of irony don't ususally come with any information on the inclusion of wordplay and puns. Anyway, I am still looking for a tallboy because I need somewhere to put my clothes. While my Tall Boy does have drawers, they are not the kind you can put clothes in.

Dear Angela Bishop

Dear Angela Bishop,

I don't know if you are aware of this or not, so I am writing to you to tell that you don't have a neck.

Regards, Felix for Zosia

Too Short To Breed

Juicebar has been telling all and sundry that he has been accused of being "too short to breed" by his housemate who... er... likes to assemble Ikea furniture in her spare time (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that). He seemed to take an unnatural amount of glee in proclaiming this opinion, much to the distress of said housemate. Having spent 8 years at university, I am not quite as stupid as I look (although the fact of having spent 8 years at university and still not being finished may possibly be an argument against my supposedly astronomically high level of intellect... humm... uncomfortable self analysis on the horizon if I'm not careful)... so I suspected that he wasn't telling the whole truth, and I asked him what she actually meant. It turns out that she was of the opinion that - in the context of their mooting the idea of a "communal baby" - the two of them were too short to breed together. Upon hearing this I paused for thought and said, in a let's-be-reasonable-and-analytical-here voice "but ER isn't particularly short, and neither are you. I don't think the two of you are too short to breed together." It was only much later that it occurred to me that having any kind of reasonable discussion about any points relating to the concept of a "communal baby" was kind of ridiculous.

Bilingual Jane: An Enigma

Every single item* of kitchenware or general household bric a brac that Bilingual Jane contributed to our abode is pink, except for the ice cube tray that makes penis shaped pieces of ice.

*I am allowed a 10% margin of exaggeration or inaccuracy as part of my creativity contact, which I wrote myself using crayons when I was bored.

Felix For Zosia: Style_Lab

I just finished reading a book called The Thoughtful Dresser by Linda Grant. I have decided that she is my Guru* of the Month. I have been so inspired by the book that I was going to go out and start myself another blog called Felix For Zosia: Style_Lab, where I would blog about fashion, non-fashion, and my outfit choices with the sophisticated wit and intelligent humour that make Felix For Zosia (original) the brilliant market success and revenue spinner that it is today. But then I decided that probably nobody would want to read such wanky bosh. But THEN I though to myself “who am I to decide?” So here is a sample of what you might find on Felix For Zosia: Style Lab if it were a real blog. Tell me what you think:

What My Clothes Say About Me: Saturday Morning
Orange scarf and grey cardigan: I feel like shit. These items look disgusting together and I can hardly believe I am wearing them. I want people on the street to know that I have a cold and a headache and possibly a smidge of hangover so I’ve chosen items that clash so horribly they will invariably induce headaches in all who observe me.

What My Clothes Say About Me: Saturday Afternoon
Blue/green scarf and grey cardigan: I am stupidly vain and hopelessly bad with money. As the day wore on and I felt better, I had to buy another scarf to replace the orange one because I couldn’t take it any longer. Even though the new scarf looks like something a mermaid would wear if it had a sore throat, I consider it an Investment Piece because it actually looks fantastic with half my wardrobe.

Autumn/Winter09: Shopping
I called my bestest, gayest friend Harveii (who is like a cross between Napoleon Perdis and Napoleon Dynamite) in a high excitement after my morning’s shopping trip. “Harveii!!! Guess what?? I’ve found my new Autumn Palette! It’s all based around a pair of earrings I bought last week. It’s such a great combination of Burnt Ochre, Tamil Tiger Green and a touch of Democratic Purple**. It’s going to be so versatile, and the best thing is that all I have to do when I go shopping for more pieces***is make sure that I wear the earrings and they will be like my personal, fashion equivalent of those paint sample things people give you when you’re redecorating the front parlour.” Needless to say, Harveii was practically as excited as I was, so we agreed to meet up and drank fruit flavoured martinis all afternoon long in a “New York style”**** bar.


*Please always pronounce this word “ga-roo” in your head when reading it anywhere on this blog. Trust me, it’s much more fun.

** For those not in the know, Democratic Purple is similar to Royal Purple but less… inbred.

***Rule number 63 of The Fashion Blog Creed states that one must always refer to “pieces” and not “clothes”. Amendment 63b states that “garment” is acceptable in certain circumstances.

****People get mugged there a lot.

Why Lesbianism is Like Assembling Ikea Furniture

I have been doing some thinking and would like to present the following analogy for perusal:

I really like Ikea furniture. I even have some in my home. I know that there are some people who like to assemble Ikea furniture, and while I know that I am physically capable of doing so myself, when faced with an array of nuts and bolts and planks of wood it all just seems like too much effort.

The Person To Whom The Deep Fryer Belonged Was Ugly Sven

As certain readers of this blog are aware (Lingual Alison first and foremost among you) I have been promising for many months to post all funny utterances from Lingual Alison’s dinner parties. Because it was taking me so long I thought I should do something really spectacular with the collected quotes, and I began working on an epic poem where every alternate line was a dinner party quote and the whole thing was tied together under the umbrella theme of ancient Roman festivals. I thought it was a fucking brilliant idea, but upon reflection I concede that I probably don’t even need to tell you that actually it was crap. In case there is any doubt I’ll give you an example:

I don’t want to say goodbye talking about my father’s genetalia!
Could we instead discuss ancient Rome, and feasts like Saturnalia?

While I have to indulge in a bit of egoism, and acknowledge that rhyming “genetalia” which “Saturnalia” was rather brilliant, I am willing to note that I am probably the only person in the world who cares. Anyway one of the problems I’ve been facing is that all the quotes seem hilarious to me but I’m not sure they would make much sense to anybody else– see the title of this post for an illustration of this point. So I will give you a severely edited version of Funny Moments From The Dinner Party:

Billy (whose parents I accused of naming their son after a piece of Ikea furniture) said “I’m terrible with single digit children”. Oh how we laughed!

* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * *

Then LA (who really needs a sexier nickname I think – suggestions welcome one and all) had a Eurovision party last weekend and I was too busy eating wonderful European-themed food and drinking wine and generally having a fabulous time to bother writing down any funny things that anybody said. I vaguely remember that Bilingual Jane and I stole a Yellow Pages on the way home, and one of the European countries won the contest. Also, there were dolmades.

Farewell, Dullard Cheese Girl, Tanty Man et al

I have finally left the crazy workplace once and for all. Squish squish. Apart from not being able to blog about it anymore, the only serious downside I can think of is that the new workplace does not have a panini maker in its non-existent staff lunch room. This is going to take some getting used to because that panini maker was sometimes the only thing that got me through the day at Crazy Former Workplace. Consequently, it has risen to great heights in my estimation of Workplace Pros and Cons, to somewhere about the level of salary-sacrifice sports car.

After a mega four days alcohol free (mostly due to the fact that I am now working during normal drinking hours) I headed to the bottle shop, where I saw a half legless man who murmured to me as he hobbled past “’s good for ya”. Now when I say “half legless” I mean that he had one leg, and was moving about with the aid of crutches. While I recognise the bad taste implicit in mocking a person’s physical disability in such a way, I was completely and utterly unable to resist.

I have one small story to report from New Workplace: a customer order was sitting on the counter this week with a note on it that said “ Customer is waiting for “The Power of Now” and will collect when it arrives”. I guess Customer couldn’t wait for someone to write a book called “The Power of Next Week”.

My Toilet Smells Like Pineapple

I think I have taken this whole adult thing a bit too far; my toilet smells like a tinned pineapple. As a welcome to Bilingual Jane, I bought one of those things that you hang off the side of the toilet bowl that releases nice smells when you flush, and also some drain cleaner. I though both these products were very adult indeed. The little thing for the toilet bowl is yellow and on the packet it says it is citrus but it really does smell like pineapple: possibly tinned or perhaps even glazed. When I tipped the drain cleaner down the shower drain it smelt like wet cardboard, only very strong and extremely toxic wet cardboard. It did work though, and now the smell has gone so we are left with the waft of pineapple.

The other day I went to David Jones and looked at all the grandma clothes. I tried on several cardigans.

I Am So Adult Right Now

In my youthful folly, my ambition was always to become an enigmatic, self-contained bohemian. It seemed to me a noble, if slightly irrational, goal. Over the years I gradually let the ambition drift off my To Do list, and, just as gradually, another life goal replaced it. This was to become adult.

For some reason, it was much harder than I thought. I didn’t feel adult when I was 18 and legally able to drink. That sort of loses its novelty factor when you have grandparents who try to force vodka down your throat from the age of 12 at family lunches.

I didn’t feel adult when I left home for the first time and lived overseas on my own. Maybe because I mostly indulged in very teenage ambitions, like eating chocolate and fried chicken every day. Or maybe it was because I travelled with a friend so I spent the first few months sharing a bedroom, and it was like being 11 again. We even squabbled.

I didn’t feel adult when I learnt to drive, but that was probably because I kept crashing other people’s vehicles. I could never afford a car of my own because I spent so much money paying off other people’s dented doors and smashed windscreens. When I finally got a car of my own I called it Humbug so that I could swear at it and call it by name at the same time when it backfired or wouldn’t start. It saved a lot of time.

However, now that I am finally old enough to be too embarrassed to tell anyone how old I am, I think I am finally an adult. I have done some very adult things recently. I signed a lease all on my own for the first time ever. Several hours after that, I became a landlady for the first time. (Guess who my tenant is? Bilingual Jane!) But the most adult thing of all happened next, and it was the total clincher: I preheated the oven. Let’s just pause and review here: I preheated the oven. Not only did I plan to cook something in an oven for goodness sake (which seems so much more grown up than a mere stovetop), I got into the kitchen*, assembled my ingredients, and decided the first thing to do was preheat the oven. Sometimes I astound myself.

*let’s call it a ‘conceptual kitchen’ because all that changes to divide up the space is the floor surface

A Tribute to Henrick Ibsen

I went to mass for Easter. There was a sign above the alter that read "HE IS ISEN" which I thought was beautiful. I mean obviously, there was a letter missing and it should have read "HE IS IBSEN" but it was still a lovely sentiment.

But what I would really like to talk about today is doughnuts. There were more Krispy Kreme doughnuts than there were people on my flight down to Adelaide the other day.

Unlike the American corporate uniformity of Kripsy Kreme doughnuts are those make by my mother's local bakery. She describes them as "the Les Patterson of Donoughts"



Trying to explain Les Patterson to a Japanese Homestay student is an interesting undertaking. That is why I love my mum. Also, she died her hair bright blue once.

Actor Boy and the Elevator

One day at the former-place-of-employ, Actor Boy had been pricing books in the basement store room, and loaded them all on to a large flat trolley. He pushed the trolley into the service lift, and as he negotiated the little bump where the doors close, 2 or 3 books fell off the trolley and down the shaft. "Mother fucker!" he yelled at the tumbling books as he uselessly flailed in an attempt to catch them. Normally, this would not cause much comment, but as this was happening, a man was walking towards the lift and interpreted Actor Boy's expletive as directed at him. The doors then closed in his face, presumably adding to the impression that Actor Boy did not much like him.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the man reached the lift and pressed the button just in time for the doors to open again, and for him and Actor Boy to share a very uncomfortable ride in the lift together, in intimate and embarrassed silence.

If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more of Actor Boy's way with words, then go to the little search bar at the top of this page and type in "actor boy". I could do one of those fancy blue self-link thingys but I can't really be arsed.

Zosia's Guide To The Modern World #1: The Slobbosexual

I found this in my drafts from about 6 months ago and have no idea why I never published it then...

What is a Slobbosexual? A slobbosexual is a man who is, first and foremost, a lazy pig. He doesn't shave, he doesn't care about women's feelings, he has no feelings of his own, he smells of stale hair and sweat. A slobbosexual's idea of dressing up is wearing covered shoes and a ripped flannie to a pub that has a "No shirt, no service" dress code.

In the social evolutionary stakes, the slobbosexual is currently at his peak, having been (chronologically) proceeded by the SNAG, the metrosexual and the retrosexual.

An example of a slobbosexual would be someone who comes up with great one liners and funny stories, that he takes care to feed to someone who has a blog so that he doesn't have to bother fashioning them into blog posts of his own. Not that I know anyone like that. (Is this ringing faint bells CC???)

The Best of Both Worlds

I know the title of this post sounds a little like a 1980s sitcom about a kid whose parents are divorced and while the mum is all about being a no rules hippy who lets her kids stay up as late as they like but makes them eat scrambled tofu for breakfast, the dad is very rich and lives in a mansion full of wide screen TVs and remote control gadgets but is very strict about homework and bedtimes.

I’m sure you’re all completely flabbergasted to discover that that is not, in fact, what the title of this post is referring to. I have another story about Dullard Cheese Girl, but I didn’t have to suffer through beigeville myself to obtain it, because I heard it from someone else. So here we go: Apparently it is more boring to catch a bus with her than to watch the bread go stale through a shop window. Poor AB got stuck with her last night and it seems DCG’s idea of sparkling co-worker public transport conversation is to relay the exact address and distance from home of every fast food outlet in the suburb where she used to live.

This litany was made all the more excruciating by the fact that DCG doesn’t make eye contact when she talks, and doesn’t talk very loudly either, so AB was forced to lean in and make an effort to hear a whole lot of crap that she didn’t actually want to hear in the first place. Maybe overt and direct rudeness has more of a place in the world than our parents have led us to believe. AB, I would like to suggest that next time you just stick your headphones on and pretend to be socially unaware but I know from experience that this is easier said than done. Somehow, it’s like DCG is a big 4wd, her boringness is the 2 huge headlights at the front, and you are the poor little rabbit stunned into mute and compliant inertia. I'm sure we've all been there at some time or another.

Bilingual Jane

I went to a fantastic dinner party the other night. I have discussed on the blog before my antisocial habit of writing down funny things that people say. I really do try to keep it to a minimum but Bilingual Jane was so funny that I cracked and in the end had to keep pen and paper at my elbow for the entire evening. (An aside: you were probably too drunk to remember this Jane, but you specifically requested that you be called Bilingual Jane and so you shall be, on this blog at least).

Here are some words of wisdom from the mouth of Bilingual Jane:

(on rude scrabble) This is like a dream come true. Phonetics! Genitalia!

(on her work situation) Either I’m going to become a male and regress in years, or I’m going to become a nutcase. I don’t like either of those options.

(on our dinner) The chicken is like sex in my mouth and there’s nooooo balsamic in sex.

And I will end with the final 2 comments on the paper from the evening. They are in my handwriting but I don’t remember writing them. I am also not entirely sure who said them or quite what they mean but that has never stopped me repeating myself before so here goes:
“Wild swamp anal dick?”
“That must be a sexual one”

Next up in the funny-things-people-say-at-dinner-parties series will be Lingual Alison, but I wrote those ones on post-it notes so they are floating around somewhere in my bedroom..

What Could Be More Boring Than Watching Bread Go Stale?

I only have two rules in life: I don’t do boring and I don’t do stupid. There is a new girl at the crazy workplace who is named after a cheese, and she is the most boring person I have ever met. The boredom just seeps out of her and infects the air around her in a somnambulant haze of ennui. At first I thought it was just me being judgemental and unchristian but I soon found out that all the cool kids think she is boring too, and they have nicknamed her The Dullard. The Spy was so desperate to avoid the tedium of a bus trip in The Dullard’s company that she decided it was preferable to look at bread through a bakery window for a quarter of an hour until the next bus came.

As many of you know (because I never shut up about it), I was once diagnosed with boredom. Having your former disease come to life and parade around you in a pair of flat shoes, a plain skirt and a solid belief in her superiority is not especially pleasant. Yes, ok, I wear flat shoes too but on me they are not boring. In fact, now that I think about it I realise that everyone at the crazy workplace wears flat shoes but they are only thunderingly boring on The Dullard. I don’t know why; she just has that effect on everything she touches. Probably Cirque de Soleil would be boring if she went to it.

As well as being boring she is ambitious. This is a pretty frightening combination when you think about it; it’s like she was born to be middle management in a large accounting firm. So while The Dullard is not exactly stupid, I think her ambition will blind her into doing some stupid things. I certainly hope so, or I will soon run out of bitchy things to write about her and that is no fun at all. As a consequence, I am heading off to work today in a positive mood as I anticipate her future encounters with The Only Gay in the Village, Tanty Man, Major Dick and The Eye.

I Didn't Sign Up For This

The Eye’s need for control is out of control. The other day I left a chart for someone explaining the ins and outs of a huge pile of books. Apparently this is unacceptable behaviour. The Eye hunted down every single person who had worked over a 2 day period to ascertain who the culprit was. Upon discovering it was me, I was given a talking to. Heavens to Betsy!!!

Here is a little roundup of conversations I have with a frequency that bores me to tears:

About once a day:
“Is there a public toilet near here?”
“Yes. Go to the corner and cross the road and you’ll see it”.
“Oh my goodness is that the closest one? That is so far away! My trust fund bones are way too fragile for such a distance. My sense of entitlement is sorely affronted!”

About once a week:
“Is that the only copy you have?”
“No. We have a secret underground cave where we keep the real stock, but we only show it to people who know the password”.

Almost every single transaction, which means about 50 times a day:
“Are you in the loyalty program?”
“Yes”.
“What is you surname?” [I only ask because my powers of intuition have momentarily failed me. You could just tell me your name from the start, but then we couldn’t have this 15 second interval that allows you to feel pampered and important]

And finally, the hot off the presses news is that the cd we have been listening to this week is called “Songs Zosia Hates”. It’s a really incredible collection, let me tell you! I don’t appreciated being asked – through song – what I have done today to feel proud. Once a day would be bad enough, but I have been asked that fucking question every 45 minutes for 8-hour stretches. There is also some stupid Whitney Houston song on there that is basically the same line repeated over and over with a key change every 20 seconds. I have never hated key changes so much in my life. I also understand why her sister wanted to kill her in The Bodyguard.

I probably don’t even need to mention the fact that there is a Bryan Adams track on there, because it’s like some universal law that anywhere a crappy collection of early nineties music is collected, he will feature in the mix. In thousands of years after our civilization has died out and the remnants of it are discovered by aliens, they are going to understand seminal ideas about our society through the music of Bryan Adams.

I am a Sad Individual

I have found that, in life, there are little signposts that pop up along the way to notify you of how tragic you are. You often find yourself caught up in the hustle and bustle of every day busyness and forget to check the trag-o-meter so these little clues - the real-life equivalent of Hansl and Gretl’s crumbs - are worth noting down and filing away for future reference. I may not be making all that much sense here but please trust that I am getting to my point, and that my point will be one which makes me look like an idiot and (hopefully) makes you laugh…

The first sign that there was something wrong came about 4 or so years ago when I realised that I owned 2 separate and different recordings of the 'Moon River Cha Cha'. Not just 2 different versions of the song 'Moon River' (written by Henry Mancini for the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s (based on the novel by Truman Capote (who as a child was the neighbour and friend of Harper Lee (author of To Kill A Mockingbird)))) and the only thing ever sung on film by Audrey Hepburn) but 2 different versions of the Cha Cha version of 'Moon River'.

Even though I own these songs, I do not think that this is ok. I really don’t. But it’s not like I can do anything about it now. I can hardly go back to the CD shop and say “Excuse me, but can I please return track 12?”. I would become their Crazy Customer of the Week! It’s just something I have to live with. And while it is tempting to put it down to a temporary transgression, I would be lying if I did not acknowledge that it is actually the clarion call of a worrying trend. As of last week, I now own 2 big band swing versions of the Radiohead classic 'Creep'.

On a different tack, it is probably worrying that I like to chose my dentists based on the comic value of their names. My current dentist is called David Jones but I am thinking of changing because I got a list of preferred providers from my health cover people and there is someone on the list called Dr Kiss. How can you not go to the dentist called Dr Kiss?

There is an update of The Crazy Workplace in the works, I promise, but so far have been to lazy to bring it to fruition.

Somebody Should Invent...

SOMEBODY SHOULD INVENT: clear wine casks. I don’t mean just the bladder bit, but the cardboard box bit too. When I am drinking from a bottle* I can measure how much I have had in one evening quite simply (ie: bottle is empty = time to stop). But with a cask there is this whole element of mystery. I have no idea how much I have drunk. The best I could do was pick up the cask and think to myself ** “ Feels heavy. I can’t have drunk too much”. It’s a fairly rudimentary measuring system and I’m not sure how accurate it is. But what has been troubling me (only a little teeny bit if I am honest) is that it is a sort of upscale cask (sounds oxymoronic but just trust me on this one), so I wonder if it feels heavy because they used premium cardboard with an expensive, thick finish on it, and that is why it feels heavy? If the cask was see-through with little lines on it like a measuring cup then all this angst would be avoided. Once again, measuring what you have drunk would become a simple matter: “I can no longer read the label telling me what this is that I have been drinking, nor see the lines on the side of the ingeniously clear cask walls that are supposed to mark 500mL increments = time to stop”.

*Obviously, what I mean here is not drinking directly from the bottle, but pouring from a bottle into a glass… unless I am in a park and the bottle is in a paper bag. I am all class.

**Ok, I might have said it out aloud to myself rather than think it, but I was the only one at home so nobody would hear me talking to myself… I’m just trying to make myself sound crazy in a cute, off-beat kind of way rather than an “if-you-see-crazy-coming,-cross-the-street kind of way). It’s all so complicated. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand.

Don’t Be A Dick!

These are recounts of actual conversations Peter Fitzsimmons has had. I was present for both of them. This is not a story or an exaggeration of any kind but rather a reportage designed to display Peter’s personality with no commentary necessary from me, as well as one comment from The Eye for which I must give snaps.

(If you are reading this because you googled yourself can I say 2 things? First: I'm not surprised. Second: Everyone thinks you're a tossbag, but they are all too intimidated to say it to your face).

1.
The Eye: Oh hello there!

PF: Don’t ‘hello’ me when you haven’t got my book on the shelf!

The Eye: Oh. I just sold one yesterday; it hasn’t come back in yet.

Random Customer: Yes there is. I’m sure I saw a copy. Let me show you.

RC and PF walk over to history section where RC does indeed find a copy of one of PF’s books. Upon returning to the counter RC introduces himself and says he enjoyed PF’s books. PF offers RC his PINKIE FINGER to shake.

The Eye: We’ve got lots of your new book on order.

PF: Really? How many?

The Eye: Over 100. Well over 100. And we’ll get more in if you do a signing for us.

PF: Oh really? So that’s your instinct is it? You think you’ll sell that many?

The Eye: Yes. Your books always do very well here.

The conversation continues in a similar fashion for a few sections (ie Burst of ego/ Stroke ego/ Burst of ego/ Stroke ego) then PF leaves.

The Eye (to me): “Oh that’s your instinct is it?” What else was I going to say? He walks up and down the street telling people to go and buy his book! We have people coming in saying “oh I just bumped into Peter Fitzsimmons and he told me to buy his book”. Of course we’re going to sell plenty. Do I need a crystal ball?

2.

The Only Gay in the Village: I saw you on the telly last night!

PF: Oh really? What was I on?

TOGITV: It was that 20 to 1 show.

PF: What was I talking about?

TOGITV: you were talking about Pauline Hanson.

PF: Was I good?

TOGITV: Yes you were.

PF: I tell you what, I find Pauline Hanson bloody attractive.

There are so many things wrong with the above conversation, not the least of which is that PF’s two children were trailing miserably behind him at the time and heard the whole thing.


An update on the saga that is The Crazy Workplace will be forthcoming. It's all too depressing to bother typing out just yet.

Thank God For Facebook

I’m sorry that this will probably offend 98% of the population between the ages of 2 and 75 but I’m saying it anyway: I don’t like Facebook. It’s a little side hobby of mine to collect reasons for why I don’t want to join up. I’ll let you in on a secret: I think it’s boring and that’s the real reason behind my reticence to join but that wears thin after the 58th time you’ve explained it to someone.

My latest reason (newly usurping the one that was because a man killed his estranged wife because she changed her status to ‘single’) came to me as I was trying to go to sleep last night. I am remotely acquainted with a young man studying to enter the priesthood. His name is Eugene, which I think is a pretty disgusting name so I won’t bother making up a pseudonym for him because if I did it would probably be ‘Eugene’ anyway.

Much like spam about penis enlargement (although thankfully less frequent), Eugene occasionally favours everyone whose email address he has ever had cause to obtain with a group email telling all and sundry about his latest shenanigans. To give you a bit of background, I knew Eugene in the days when he was - according to his mother - the most promising and gifted musician in the whole wide city of Adelaide. I knew Eugene when he discovered girls and hormones (although probably not in precisely that order). I saw Eugene being physically restrained from going up to a group of English girls and asking them that most romantic of questions: “do you have any Australian in you?” followed, poetically, by “Do you want some?”.

After the musician thing did not result in a multi million dollar recording contract with Sony Classical, he flirted with the idea of becoming the world’s most brilliant and charismatic actor. I know, because I got the emails you see. This lasted a couple of years but when he did not become the Catholic Tom Cruise he had to try something different. So 6 months after the email telling me that he had been someone or other in Fiddler On The Roof another email arrived telling me that he had decided to train for the priesthood. Like previous emails, this one was long and somewhat self-involved. A nice new touch was his request for my prayers. Every now and then he is let out of the seminary and goes on tours on religious sites and other exciting, chaste adventures. He sends emails all about it.

So this thought that occurred to me as I was trying to get to sleep was that if Eugene and I were Facebook Friends I would hear about his life EVERY DAY.

Drinking Your Own Urine

I don’t get it.

Obviously it is a disgusting concept, taste wise, but so are many other things: Neil Diamond for example. While I myself am not a fan of Neil Diamond I (grudgingly) respect other people’s right to be. The thing I don’t get about drinking your own urine is that it is supposed to be a health thing. How can something that is the waste product of your body be worth putting back into your body? And on the question of taste – I wonder how people manage to swallow the stuff. Somehow I don’t think a slice of lemon would cut it. Do they add a huge dash of Cottee’s raspberry cordial? That would probably cover the taste but all that sugar would also defeat the purpose of the health benefit thing… unless you used diet cordial.

In other news, I got out of jury duty today. I had a pretty good excuse, considering one of my co-workers has several broken ribs and stitches in his head, but just in case I decided to look as much like a bleeding heart leftie hippie as possible so that I would be challenged by one of the lawyers and asked to leave. I also wore the necklace my dad gave me that we found out (after I had been wearing it for a year) says "Allah" in Arabic, so that one of the other lawyers might challenge me and I would be asked to leave...

Oh and I broke resolution number whatever it was and bought a book yesterday. But it was Obama's speech so I figure since it was like a part of history and shit it's ok to break a promise to myself.

But back to the urine thing: I just don't get it. And would the raspberry cordial make it look orange? And is it something you only do once, or do you keep drinking and emitting the same few mils of liquid? Because I really don't see the point of that.

Food for Thought #3

What is it about social justice that makes people so goddamn vague and hopelessly inefficient? Seriously, just because you have dreadlocks and a virtuous demeanour shouldn’t mean that you cannot perform simple tasks. Patchouli doesn’t decrease brain function, does it? I live near the Fair Trade Café in Glebe and it’s all “helping poor people” this and “sustainable mumbo jumbo” that, but do you think they can take a drinks order and deliver it? The short answer is “no” and the long answer is “They are so hopeless that I perceive about a 50% success rate of ordered food and drinks actually being delivered to the table. 50% may be a pass in the university grading system – hell, 45% is a pass in some instances – but writing an essay takes a lot longer than brewing a coffee. And the point of that pass grade is to acknowledge all the steps that go into the researching and writing of an essay. Most people can at least manage a discussion of the topic that reaches the word limit. It might not make a lot of sense, and they might be hopeless spellers but you can laugh to yourself when you point out to them that ‘wether’ was not picked up by their spell check because it is a kind of sheep. The coffee making equivalent of this would be a shit tasting coffee that arrived after a rather long wait. The Fair Trade norm is no coffee arriving at all, so we don’t even know if it is shit tasting or not. That is pretty bad. The only occasion that I have ever been there and they didn’t fuck it up was when I only ordered one thing. I used to think Lavender Blue was the worst and most vague service I had ever come across in a café and special forces stormed through the windows there to arrest people the other day so I wonder what is in store for the Fair Trade. Maybe through their own incompetence they will accidentally send themselves to Uganda as foreign aid… which would be a pity for the Ugandans who would probably do much better without them”.

Now that makes me think maybe the reason there is so much poverty in the world is because the poor people are being ‘helped’ by a bunch of hippie do-gooders who couldn’t organise to pour water from a boot if there were instructions on the heel. Food for thought indeed.

The Year Is '200Mine'

Partly because I thought there might be some genuine interest, but mostly because I am completely self-absorbed and think that anything relating to me is completely wonderful I have decided to give you all an update on my resolutions for 200mine.

1. Bump into less things: I currently have several bruises on my legs, but I plan to bump into less things over the whole year, so there is still time for improvement here.

2. Buy no new books (Thanks to AW for pointing out the loophole here: I can buy second hand books!) So far so good.

3. Buy more music with money saved in resolution #2: I am getting back into the swing of buying stuff that I may not necessarily like, but I proceed with the purchase so the sales assistant and others will think that I am cool. Yesterday involved a remix of the Modern Jazz Quartet. (CC - do you think I am cool?)

4. Take part in Urban Decay: Still working on this one...

5. Eat less cheesy snacks: failed

6. Become fluent in half a dozen foreign languages: have decided to cheat a little and brush up on my Old English, since I already know my irregular verbs and how to say 'hello' (It's 'hwaet" in case you're interested)

7. Lose weight: see #5

8. Drink less: No comment

I Am Still Alive, But Only Just!

Kids, I feel like crap. The Only Gay in The Village saw fit to pass his cold on to me so while I wrote out the previous post a few days ago I couldn’t be bothered uploading it.

Let me tell you something for free: PMS + bad cold = VERY unhappy camper.

I will never again listen to the advice of a chemist if that advice happens to be along the lines of “lemsip will make you feel less revolting”. On the box is a list of symptoms with ticks next to each one: Headache, Fever, Body Aches & Pains, Sore Throat. Yes, I have all those things ticked and no, none of them have been reduced from taking the lemsip. Funnily enough, the things that don’t have ticks next to them, for example “lemon flavour” and “hot drink” are also true. On the telly, the little creature with a big, shiny red nose takes lemsip and then feels better. That’s what I was expecting to happen to me but alas, I am left full of disappointment and mucus.

How To Tell If Your Party Was a Success: A Layperson’s Guide

(if you can check at least three of the following off then your party has been a mild success. Over 5 and it was a great success. All 7 and you are a better person that I for you are a fabulous host AND you are modest because you didn’t boast about it on your blog)

1. Someone ditched a date to attend
2. Someone else flew in from Bhutan to attend
3. Follow up reports confirm that one attendee was so drunk she was unable to speak in the taxi home, so had to poke her companion (similarly so drunk that he was asleep) in order to get him to pay the cab driver.
4. The punch was replenished about 7 or 8 times, so much so that I am unable to provide one wholly accurate recipe… it started with mango puree, lemonade, pink champagne, gin, pear vodka, lemon juice, lime juice and white rum. Along the way we added (at various stages) tequila, ginger ale, orange juice, plain vodka, a tin of lychees and a lot of love.
5. There is a random character wandering about in utterly inappropriate attire. In this case it was a tuxedo, with a black hat pulled low over his eyes like a bootlegging gangster.
6. The kitchen floor is sticky, all the glasses you own are dirty and the bin is full 5 days before rubbish collection
7. Although plenty of wine, mixers and spirits were provided, the morning reveals a tub in the bathroom inexplicably full of beer and one bottle of champagne.

Bonus Point: Someone gets taken home in a wheelbarrow. (Alas, we didn’t receive the bonus point this time but I have managed to achieve it once before. It was many years ago now and I didn’t really realise at the time that I had attained a kind of party throwing nirvana, probably never to be repeated. I mean seriously, a frigging wheelbarrow!! At the risk of sounding like a 19 years old frat boy, that is so fucking cool.)

2009

Here are my goals and resolutions for 2009:

1. Bump into less things

2. Buy no new books (Thanks to AW for pointing out the loophole here: I can buy second hand books!)

3. Buy more music with money saved in resolution #2

4. Take part in Urban Decay

5. Eat less cheesy snacks

6. Become fluent in half a dozen foreign languages

7. Lose weight

8. Drink less

(Don't worry: 7 and 8 are only there because from what I understand they are obligatory on any New Year Resolution list. I plan on failing dismally on both counts).

Arthur and Noel

My time in Bris Vegas has had a distinct touch of Regency England about it. By that I mean we have done an awful lot of visiting and entertaining. We have sat in people's parlours drinking tea and coffee. We have discussed people called Betty and Jim and Bernie who are mostly all dead. We have discussed at great length and on numerous occasions the school my grandmother went to across the river. Today we went for a trip to the hills to take the air and marvel at the view.

The culmination of all this was a visit from Arthur and Noel who came to tea. If Kim from Kath and Kim was a 65 year old gay man, she would be Arthur. If Dobbie (that skinny little creature from Harry Potter) and John Denver had a love child in the form of a 65 year old gay man, it would be Noel. Arthur and Noel went to the hairdresser together some time in about 1978 and got matching hairstyles, which they have chosen to retain ever since.

Arthur and Noel are lovely people but their main topic of conversation with my aunt and uncle seems to be real estate. They talked real estate all night long. By laws, pot plants, renovations, plumbing (apparently only 3 apartments in the whole complex have had a second bathroom put in!!!!!), double glazing... I know all about number 7 where Olive used to live. Olive is blind so there are no lights in her apartment but all the curtains and so on match and are in mint condition. Olive's apartment will be up for sale in a few months. I know all about Ray as well who lives on the 6th floor. He complains about his TV reception.

At one point I wondered why we were sticking to such a dull, dull, dull as dishwater topic. A few minutes later we started talking about ethnic taxi drivers. This was followed by Arthur's opinion on the Samoans who do nothing except smoke outside the Centrelink office all day long. Certainly not a topic I felt confortable contributing to, but since my Aunt has a PhD in South Sea Islander health issues I wasn't the only one at the table who felt that way. There was a weird spell where nobody concurred with anything Arthur said and in the time it takes you to say "Jack rabbit" we were back talking pot plants.

This continued until my mother almost literally fell asleep at the table (and for once I am not exaggerating) and we were released.

Bris Vegas

After spending the last few weeks doing back breaking work for the great washed, I have pitched up in the frontier town of Bris Vegas for a few days. So far the best moment was on the ferry on new years eve when the captain gave a long winded and virtually illiterate (not sure if something verbal can be illiterate, but he gave it a red hot go) announcement that alcohol was not to be permitted on the bank so if anyone had brought it with them ... well... they, um... wouldn't be able to... well.... it would... in fact... be taken off them. So... ah... well.. because.... yeah.

I am staying with the Aunty Who Likes To Organise. She will happily organise anything - from houses to documents, but her favourite thing by far to organise is Other People's Lives. Lucky me. She has decided that the perfect thing for me to do is to volunteer in a remote community in the desert. This will apparently solve all my problems, including the ones I didn't realise I had.

Bris Vegas isn't all bad though: I won Scrabble today, the coffee is good, and I am stealing someone's wireless connection to type this.

I had a job interview the other day which was fine except that the questions came directly from the "1994 Guide to Interview Questions; A Practical Guide For Interviewers". Seriously, when was the last time anyone was asked "what is your biggest strength?", followed immediately by "what is your biggest weakness?" (I said my biggest weakness was bumping into things, mostly because I said something boring and sucky for my strength so I couldn't go with the standard "I work too hard" as I thought it would be overkill). I also got questions about "working in a team to achieve a goal" at which point I vomited on the interviewer's shoes in disgust.

Incidentally, I didn't get the job which may be due to the vomiting thing, or maybe because I corrected a typo on the questionnaire I had to fill out. And yes, I know that is not "working in a team" but it is showing "initiative" as well as "attention to detail".