Felix for Zosia

Christ On A Bike?

2012-02-02T11:22:00.003+11:00

Apparently Christ isn't always on a bike, today he is wearing a white coat and wielding the scalpel at my local dental surgery. I am trying to find a dentist a bit closer to home than my old one and because I have a dental phobia my criteria are slightly odd

FYI the criteria are:
1. must not have a Greek surname unless female because the thought of big, fat, hairy fingers in my mouth is so horrific that I can't even contemplate the idea that the dentist may be of the tall, tan, Adonis type, just in case
2. must not advertise "our dental directors" because that sounds bloody expensive to maintain and I am not interested in contributing
3. Must have studied at an English speaking university because I want to understand readily and without deciphering thick accents exactly how much pain I will be in and for how long
4. (admittedly difficult to ascertain) Must be impartial to and NOT passionate about the subject of cars or similarly boring subjects. My dental phobias stem from the time the anaesthetic didn't work and I spent an hour in agony listening to the dentist drone on about how awesome Volvos are.

And now back to my search: I find a listing for a dental surgery in the CBD, click on the link to the website and a song starts to play. Seems a bit of a poncy thing to do, plus the music sounds like total shit so I decide that I can't possibly see a dentist who has such terrible taste in music but before I have a chance to turn it off I catch the lyric and am arrested in horror:

Give thanks with an open heart
Give thanks to the holy one

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?? You think that forgoing faith in Science and the Medical profession is OK as long as you profess faith in a non physical entity of dubious reality?
I am NOT putting my faith in God when it comes to anything, but most especially not situations involving DRILLS in my MOUTH. Put simply, nothing could be calculated to terrify me more.

Mysteries Of The Universe

2012-01-25T08:35:00.002+11:00

I've been doing some deep thinking lately and have reached the conclusion that there are certain things in this world that I will never understand. I have complied a list:

1. Deleuze
2. Leafblowers

Overheard in a (rival) Bookshop

2012-01-13T19:01:00.000+11:00

Customer: Do you have, am not sure of title in English but I think it is The Prince. Do you have The Prince? Do you know it?

Sales Assistant: I don't know that one. Is it about a prince?

Customer: Yes! Is about prince!

Sales Assistant: It's about Prince?

Customer: Yes!!

Sales Assistant: If we did have a book about Prince it would be in the music section but I can tell you now we definitely don't have it because I've just been in the music section and it's not there. Sorry!

Doing my Bit For Society

2011-12-15T09:50:00.000+11:00

Peter Fitz Slime-Ons, I'd just like to let you know that I strayed from professional demeanor and told a few customers yesterday how much I dislike you. To one person, I said "He's probably my least favourite person in the world". Tallboy thought this a bit extreme but as I pointed out "I haven't met Kim Jong Il so I don't really know what he's like".

Work Schmork

2011-12-01T14:42:00.001+11:00

Yesterday at work I got called "a very pleasant human search function". Not really sure I can add anything to that one...

I also had to fax a far flung post office twice (on behalf of someone we sent a parcel to) because they have a phone/fax line that nobody can call them on since it is always switched to fax. They only have the one line. Way to go, Australia Post! If I were chirpy enough to think of an appropriately rude and ironic award then I would bestow one on you. As it is, I am far too grumpy, bitter and down trodden to be bothered.

I suspect I may be in need of a holiday. There are always teeny, tiny little clues to working out when this is the case so perhaps we can review the evidence together and see where I'm at on the Need A Holiday Meter: Yesterday, I wrote on a piece of paper "I am sick of humanity". I also said to a colleague "I am sick of books, I am sick of people and I am sick of bookshops and I hate everything and I don't care anymore". Whatcha reckon?

Deck The Halls

2011-11-24T16:12:00.001+11:00

Dear Person Who Invented Industry Christmas Parties,

Thankyou!

What a truly wonderful idea. I went to one last week and had my annual 3 minute conversation with a number of people. Now I feel all virtuous, and chuffed with the knowledge that we don't need to speak again for another 12 months. Delightful!

Keep me posted on your inventions, especially if you come up with anything regarding annoying work colleagues.

Love, Felix for Zosia

This Just In...

2011-11-20T12:10:00.000+11:00

Is my memory failing me, or did Whitney Houston used to be married to Australian Greens senator Bob Brown? Coz I also thought that he was gay... confused...

Sweeny Todd

2011-11-18T10:31:00.001+11:00

The other day at work I was talking about a pub I had been to recently. In trying to give an impression of what it was like I said "from the outside it looks like somewhere where you might get stabbed, but the inside is actually quite nice". Without missing a beat, one of my colleagues said "is that Sweeneys?"

He was dead right, and the funny thing is, I still can't work out what exactly contributes to the general aura of "you-will-get-stabbed-ness. I mean, there isn't even a sign that says "No shirt, no shoes, no service" which, I find, always flags concern. I pass it on average about 4 times a week and have never seen any hideously drunk or injured people scattered on the pavement nearby, there's no 80s rock blasting from the interior, there are no bullet holes or broken windows... I guess it's just one of life's great mysteries.

I Am A Wanker Hipster

2011-11-12T21:54:00.002+11:00

Yes kids, I'm sorry but I'm afraid it's true. For a while I thought I was safe from this peril because I don't have a beard and I don't wear my pants ever so slightly rolled up at the cuff but the evidence has been accruing at an alarming rate. Judge for yourselves:

1. I have an iPhone.

2. When I write "iPhone" I make sure to spell it with a small i and capital P

3. Much like Romy (or Michele) from the cinematic classic Romy and Michele's High School Reunion was "familiar with the entire Versace Line", I am familiar with the entire Apple line.

4. I own and listen to music by both Gillian Welch and Miles Davis.

5. I drink a lot of boutique tea and "good" coffee.

6. I live in Potts Point.

These things taken individually may only imply mild hipster tendencies; two or three together might still leave room for reform. Unfortunately, I crossed the line today and there really is no going back:

7. I have just ordered a new pair of glasses. The frames are made of acetate and cut with laser to look like wood.

If I wasn't so goddamn excited about my new purchase I would weep for what I have become. From now on, (whether or not I wear tan coloured brogues without socks, or weird, ugly, 80s-esque baggy clothes) I will be branded as a hipster like a deer is marked as prey by a hunter.

Put The Goddam Toilet Seat DOWN!

2011-09-22T10:41:00.003+10:00

I have figured out the solution to gender inequality and can't believe it has taken this long to spot something so simple! Let me walk you through it:

I was at a dinner party recently and the topic moved to the fraught and emotive debate of Toilet Seat Up vs Toilet Seat Down. The men in the room wanted to know why they should comply with the accepted social etiquette if it meant 50% of the population is unhappy with it, and I came up with a couple of pretty good answers (please try these at home):

1. Whenever a man needs to do a Number Two, he needs the toilet seat to be down. It therefore follows that the toilet seat needs to be down for something in the region of 60-70% of all toilet visits, regardless of gender, in the entire world spectrum of toilet visits.* Therefore, this 50% of the population thing is bullshit. If we are using maths as a basis for our argument the figures clearly support the toilet seat being left DOWN.

2. When a person (male or female) needs to use the toilet with the seat down they sort of have to approach the toilet backwards. Unlike the point and shoot approach of a man pissing, this is a far more complicated negotiation as one can't easily see where one is going. Common courtesy suggests that the seat should remain in the optimum position for those experiencing greater levels of difficulty approaching the toilet. After all, nobody complains about those nobbly things at the edge of EVERY SINGLE train station platform for the 6 or 7 blind people out of thousands of non-blind people who catch trains each day.

Personally, I feel the above arguments are solid (excuse pun) and compelling. The men I spoke with seemed to agree. However, I suspect not everyone will be so easy to persuade. I think most men will still gripe over the toilet seat issue because they always have done, and it's less effort to change the habit of a lifetime of pub debates. Which brings me to the main point of this blog post: I believe that the reason behind the socially acceptable stance being Toilet Seat Down is that the women do almost all of the toilet training and so they teach their sons to leave the toilet seat they way they like it. LIGHTBULB MOMENT!!!!

Gentlemen: If you would prefer the toilet seat to remain UP, the best way to make sure this happens is to nip it in the bud. Make sure you support equal pay conditions for men and women, and make sure you can get paternity leave and spent as much time at home looking after the kids as your wives do so that you can teach your boys to LEAVE THE TOILET SEAT UP. GENIUS!!!!!

Ladies: I'm sure we can all agree that, in exchange for equal pay, equal respect at work, equal representation on business boards and in government, equal PRCE OF HAIRCUTS FOR FUCK"S SAKE and equal distribution of household chores and childcare duties, we will all be perfectly happy to concede on the point of the toilet seat.

EVERYBODY WINS!!!!!!

*excluding squat toilets, obvs.

Dogs For Dictators

2011-09-06T21:28:00.001+10:00

I have had a brainwave. I've designed a program that will actually bring about world peace; it is breathtaking in its audacity and shocking in its simplicity. It is: Dogs For Dictators! (drum roll and brass fanfare please).

If every evil dicatator in the world were given a pet dog upon whom they could lavish love, I think their desire to thwart, rape, pillage and ethnic cleanse would evaporate. The dog would be so cute and bouncy (incontinent, smelly, grumpy 15 year old blind dogs need not apply) that the dictators would realise there is more to life than being so mean and shouty.

Just imagine how different the world would be today if Pol Pot had had a Pomeranian, or if someone had given The Fuhrer a French poodle. Before the world gets any worse, let's organise a Kelpie for Kim Jong Il, and some fluffy white Maltese terriers for Robert Mugabe.

Cash donations gratefully accepted.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

2011-08-24T09:02:00.000+10:00

I'm going to make a bold statement here, but I think the reason Johnny Depp grew that ridiculous moustache and long hair was because he got sick of being mistaken for k. d. lang. You might think they don't really look much like one another, and I agree with you but the thing you've got to remember is that there are quite a lot of incredibly stupid people in the world.

For example, the number of people who want to buy or look at the book "Eat, Pray, Love" and can't manage to get the three words of the title in the correct order outnumbers the people who can by about 550 bazillion percent. It's an even worse statistic than the number of people who think Tony Abbott and Peter Costello used to be a comendy duo from Hollywood's Golden Era.

Also, scientists are very stupid when it comes to inventing things that would make my life easier and better. I am still waiting on square pigs, see-through wine casks with level markers up the side, and a couch that feels like someone is hugging you with optional mock-hand back-stroking appendage (for those lonely Winter nights)... I am far too busy coming up with the ideas to work on the details. Also, I am quite busy drinking beverages and watching Project Runway and having to walk the long way around to get home so I can avoid the stairs.

Where Too Much Talent Is Never Enough

2011-07-04T14:57:00.002+10:00

As usual, the long and silent break from blogging has been due to my busy schedule; this time, I have been working on a large and utterly un-important but much fun project with a number of collaborators. We have written a book! Ok, I'll be honest: we have written as much of a book as you can in one night when wine and food consumption was also taking up valuable time. The fruits of this project will soon appear on the lustrious space that is Felix For Zosia. In the meantime, a word from Billingual Jane (part of the team): "Molto sexuale. Quanto pasta. Ok we have to think of a good ending... coz we're at dessert!"

Why Is Everything So Hard?

2011-05-18T11:11:00.000+10:00

Ok, there is a lot of really shitty frustrating stuff in my life right now, but I have realised that there isreally only one thing that needs to happen which will fix almost everything:

Breed square pigs.

I was making a ham sandwich the other day, and my piece of ham came in a big, double smoked, fatty circle of meat. My bread was square. The two shapes did not fit and I wasted precious seconds (that could have been used more efficiently, like by coming up with a cure for cancer or something) folding and ripping the ham to fit on the bread. If the ham came in a square shape to begin with I would have produced a delightful sandwich AND discovered the cure for cancer and the reason this didn't happen is all the fault of the lazy, dullard pig farmers who need to get their shit together.

I Speak A Clear English

2011-05-07T21:18:00.003+10:00

I love to search the job ads when i can't think of anything to write on my blog - it is so easy to find material. I am just going to cut and paste this one as I think you can't mess with genius and it's perfect all on its own":

Profetional Food Runner

Must have worked at least five years in hospitality,if not we can provide you with a certficate trought Tafe if u r Australian resident .If u r not u must have working visa and have a great knowledge of the itlian cuisine
Must have a good understanding of English and speak a clear English.
We need a long therm commitment from who takes on the job
If u r a team player send in your resume

Also, if you are semi-literate in at least one language (it doesn't matter which one as we won't be able to understand you anyway), we'd love to hear from you. Must be a team player, dynamic, able to work as part of a team, dynamic, dynamic and knowledgeable in either basic food preparation or sewer drainage.

Secret Love Children Exposed!!!

2011-04-08T15:07:00.000+10:00

I know I haven't posted on this thing properly for ages, but I have been doing some serious undercover research. Here is what I found out:

SJP had a baby that she thought was stolen by a dingo:

Not quite sure what Liza Minnelli was doing while she was married to Peter Allen but presumably she had to get rid of the evidence (which became Julian Cleary)

And finally... Layne Beachley's long search for her natural birth mother has finally ended:

"oh you can smell the nerd"

2011-03-12T08:15:00.003+11:00

Thus spake Juicebar as we walked past a gaming shop at closing time and all the staff swarmed out together. Each one was so different and unique, yet so very, very nerdy. There was one of every kind: the girl with thick glasses and unnatural, bright hair; the pale and wan young man in dusty black who looks as though he has not been out in the sun since his christening; the young man who would be pale and wan yet is cowed with a rampant affliction of acne, and possibly also a skin allergy; the Asian geek with thin, square glasses frames designed in 1991 and an IQ so high he is left unable to boil an egg or figure out how the washing machine works; and finally the guy with the long pony tail who always tucks his shirt into his pants and never wears jeans. Really, they were Spice Girls of Geek.

Girl Power

2011-02-21T14:13:00.002+11:00

As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling the other day, I got to thinking about how the feminists are leaving too many stones unturned. The battle for changing "manhole" to "personhole" has, I feel, been lost but that is no reason to give up the fight for equality on other words. Perhaps more women would take up a person-dolin than a mandolin?

Further to this, why are there not cuntroaches as well as cockroaches? While I know that a rooster is male, surely the noise it makes ought not be gender specific, so I encourage all and sundry to do away with "cock-a-doodle do" and instead embrace (at least 50% of the time) "cunt-a-woowoo do" or, if you prefer: "cunt-a-front-bottom do" or "cunt-a-vajayjay-do".

What's The Matter Walter - Chicken?

2011-02-01T18:40:00.003+11:00

I think I am fairly balanced and fair, and I wouldn't call myself a snob or anything, but I have to say there are loads of things better about PoPo, our new hood, than the shit-encrusted, poxy rat-hole we lived in before. Ok, maybe I am being just a tiny bit dramatic. In actual fact, I can only think of two things that are better in PoPo: real estate agents and chicken carcasses. Other than that, things remain largely unchanged in my lifestyle.*

But I don't want to give the impression that these are minor changes, because not having to deal with Walter the Farting Dog (our former real estate agent) has put years on my life. As for the chicken carcasses, well... I could explain that one but it isn't quite so funny.

*Usually this word means one of 3 things: homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, or interior design. I just want it to mean "the style of my life".

What a To Do!

2011-01-16T09:45:00.002+11:00

Writing a To Do list when drunk may be entertaining, but it probably isn't particularly useful. Here is mine from the other day:

-Google: Quentin/wheelchair
-Washing machine
-Walter Mathau and Fidel Castro in a New York apartment

Public Transport Always Entertains

2011-01-05T15:52:00.003+11:00

Overheard on the bus:

Teenager 1 "St Slutstica's"

Teenager 2 "What?"

Teenager 1 "Slutstica's. There's a school called St Scholastica's and we always used to call them "St Slutstica's"

Teenager 2 "That's not very nice!"

Teenager 1 "Yeah I know. But they're all sluts".

A New Low

2010-12-28T12:23:00.003+11:00

I have not posted here for a month and a half which is a new low for me. I could say it's because I have been busy. As a matter of fact, I have been quite busy: I moved house, I started a campaign to ban purple boat shoes from the streets of Potts Point, I spent a lot of time thinking about dimmable lights, and I have also started writing my memoirs*. But to be honest all that has been make-work to avoid the fact that I saw something which left me deeply traumatised and unable to concentrate on simple, everyday tasks. As part of my therapy I will relate the vision here:

A family stepped onto the footpath from a hotel foyer. The young girl (aged about 10) was wearing a sexy Mrs Santa negligee - red dress with fluffy white ruffles at the hem. She had a headband from which two giant candy canes protruded like antlers or - if you prefer hen's night type imagery - like red and white striped droopy penises. Her mother was wearing exactly the same dress in exactly the same size. And just to clarify, the mother was NOT the same size as her young daughter. Nowhere near. There was back cleavage.

At first I thought the two young boys (maybe 8 or so. Definitely old enough to have some agency in the way of sartorial choice) were just in mildly humiliating red and green combination clothes but it soon became apparent that they were dressed as elves with jaunty zig zag hems on their tops. I can't quite remember whether or not there were bells involved. I can see you thinking that the Mrs Santa disaster sounds a lot worse than the elf thing, and that is what I though too, until one of the boys moved so that I could see, written in large letters on his bottom "Santa's Little Helper". I have thought long and hard about phrases stamped on a small child's rear end, and concluded that there is only one phrase that could possibly surpass this one in hideous wrongness: "Santa's Little Helping". Actually, I only thought about it for a minute or so. I'm sure that the next time there is a blackout or a long car trip where the cd player is broken an excellent way to pass the time would be to think up phrases to have printed on the pants of your young children in order to scar them for life. Please keep me up to date with your suggestions!

*I haven't really got past the title yet, but it is going to be called "A ......" I'm still fleshing out the final details.

"Renovator's Dream" Does Not Mean The Property Is Close To Bunnings

2010-11-15T15:14:00.003+11:00

So we moved into the amazing apartment and I learnt something useful: NLJ has an apartment identical to ours except that you can see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House through his toilet window. Going on what we are respectively paying for our apartments I have reached the conclusion that being able to see Sydney Harbour is not -as the real estate agents would have you believe- a million dollar view. It is worth precisely $10 a week.

Don’t Press Send

2010-10-13T13:23:00.002+11:00

Tallboy and I are moving house. There are several contributing factors that led to this decision but the main one was that the landlord has ended our lease. So we went house-hunting last week and found a total gem of an apartment that we applied for on the spot. I even got my driver's license out (but covered up the photo so we didn't scare our prospective landlady to death). During the agonising 2 day waiting period to find out whether or not our application was successful I wrote the landlady several emails. Luckily, I didn't send any of them:

Dear Di,
Just wanted to let you know how great it was to see the apartment and to meet you. You are awesome! Tallboy and I are very responsible people, to the point of being sad, boring old farts. For example, we quite like to drink tonic water without the gin. We also like to go on walking tours, and to discuss formatting, fonts and punctuation late into the night (sometimes even until 10pm!!!). As I said, it was really great to meet you, Felix

Dear Di,
Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I have been thinking about the apartment and any improvements that could be made on it. And... there aren't any!! It's perfect!!!!
Good luck choosing an awesome tenant for it and let me know if I can help in ANY way at all! Thanks, Felix

Dear Di,
It was sooo great to meet you when we went to see your apartment that I can't stop thinking about it. Tallboy and I have been discussing it and we have concluded that our love for your apartment is greater by far than our love for each other. So it would be a little bit like destiny and a lot like awesome perfection if we moved into it so we could complete the circle of love. I hope this doesn't sound crazy or anything but I honestly believe that if buildings can have feelings then yours has feelings for me and Tallboy. Strong feelings. Romantic feelings. Please Rent Me feelings (don't take that the wrong way). Have a great day, Felix

Hey Di,
You know something? I think one syllable names are so cool. And yours in particular really suits you. You seem like the coolest person I have ever met, and I have met quite a few, even though I am so boring and responsible.
Anyway, it was great to meet you. I loved how you opened the door for us; it was a lovely touch. Look forward to hearing from you soon - but don't rush or anything - I know being fabulous takes up lots of time so whenever you're ready. Thanks again for your time, Felix xoxo

If You Don't Like The Way I Drive Then Get Off The Footpath

2010-09-22T17:29:00.003+10:00

I went back to the RTA for a third time today and finally managed to get my driver's license. And you would think I'd be pleased but in fact I am PISSED OFF because I look like a fucking AXE MURDERER in the picture! I know that everybody is supposed to look bad in ID photos but there is bad and there is Baaad. There is looking a bit off colour or tired, and there is looking malicious and arrestable. The only benefit is that I can whip it out like capsicum spray to scare off people who try to attack me.

Along with my evil, piercingly santanic stare, my head ended up looking rather boxy in a root vegetable, news reader sort of a way so I look like a fugly , boxy, axe murderer. I thought all the hours I have spent watching the Top Model franchise shows online would have helped me to develop a great technique for staring at a camera and waiting for it to take a picture of me, but apparently not.

Of course, it has occurred to me that the problem, rather than being with a badly taken photo, lies with the fact that I look like an evil Rob Kelvin* dressed up as a sweet potato but I think if that was the case then surely somebody would have mentioned it to me by now... right?

*If you are not familiar with Rob, one of Adelaide's most boringly staid news-readers, then just imagine what David Hasselhoff would look like if he were an upstanding member of the local Uniting Church, never drank alcohol, bred pigeons, and had a name like "Rob" or "Reg" and you're pretty much there. Now imagine this person looking like a sweet potato with a scarf around their neck and you know exactly what I look like in my license picture.

Eavesdropping Is Awesome

2010-09-19T07:49:00.000+10:00

I really, really like sitting around on ugly plastic chairs in waiting areas where an automated voice calls out numbers on tickets and tells you which counter to visit. I like it so much that I decided to go back to the motor registry place on my day off last week just so I could be told there was nothing they could do and I should try again next week, which is what they told me the week before. It was awesome.

The cherry on top to my wonderful banana split with extra choclate and nuts of an excursion was at the expence of the woman next to me (ticket number T45, counter 4). The woman behind the counter asked her what her previous address was and she said "22 Queen St Woo-Wah-Wah". The poor, poor dear - of all the suburbs to live in when you have a quite significant speech impediment. I only hope for her sake that she didn't leave Woolhara only to move to Wooloomooloo or Warriwee.

There's No Emoticon For The Way That Makes Me Feel

2010-08-31T21:35:00.002+10:00

I have spent the past week stuck in bed feeling like shit and most of it has been a complete waste of time. A very large proportion of my time has been taken up with blowing my nose, and while this was extremely useful in the short term, in the long-run, it is an action that will not be remembered. It will not change the world, or be useful to others, or help me to make a name for myself in perpetuity.

However, in between nose blows I had a lot of thinking time. And I mean a LOT. It began to bother me that there is no emoticon for the phrase "Christ on a bike!". I have been using this phrase quite a bit recently so it seemed a great pity. I spent hours obsessing over the stupidity of it all and then put my bedridden status to good use and I invented one myself. Christ on a bike! So here it is: +!8

Now that I have invented something I can die in peace. Or maybe I'll wait a bit longer; I still have a custard tart in the fridge that ought to be eaten.

The Problem With Inception

2010-08-18T20:34:00.000+10:00

Tallboy and I saw Inception the other day and it wasn't bad but I got to thinking afterwards that my biggest problem with it is that it wasn't dreamlike enough. Unless, that is, we are talking about the dreams that special effects artists have. I don't know about you but I don't tend to dream about things that look visually amazing in an expensive, technological sort of way. For example, I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I was a journalist tracking down some underworld heavies. I'm pretty sure I was a man too, but it's hard to be objective; it was just a feeling; not like my friend NC who regularly dreams of people walking around naked with one or two extra penises for added impact.

...anyway, I got chased into my house and while trying to stop my pursuer from breaking down the door, I started yelling at Stephen Page (who in the dream was my son but in real life is the Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre) to call 000. "Stephen. STEPHEN!!! Call the police!!! Stephan, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? For Christ's sake call the fucking emergency services! Don't just sit there!!!" My recalcitrant child stared moodily at me but didn't move so I raced over to do it myself. I punched the bowl of raw meat strips in front of him three times with my finger. Lucky it was a push button phone or things would've become messy.

Photos:
My son (third from the left) and my phone

Today Was Awesome; A Story In Two Chapters

2010-07-26T20:03:00.003+10:00

Chapter One: The Customer As Hero

The sweet looking grandma, dripping in gold and pearls did not exactly measure up to type. She seemed placid enough at first, but my hero worship kicked in when she began a conversation about politics and managed to end it by yelling at the top of her voice "there are only two things, in my opinion, that men are interested in: SEX and WINNING".

Apologies to the mild mannered old man who happened to be in the shop at the time, quietly minding his own business. I presume the reason you left so quickly was because you realised it was a while since you had had sex or won anything.

Apologies also to anyone who has found this blog by googling "sex and winning". It probably isn't quite what you were looking for.

Chapter Two: The Customer As Dullard

The slightly frazzled looking middle aged woman practically flung herself at the counter. "There's a new book out... [pause to give me time to give her the answer, in case this was all the information she would need to provide me with]. It's called something like... Crime."

I looked at the reddish lacy corset she had on over her skivvy and under her jacket, which was bravely teamed with an akubra. I took a deep breath and allowed my brain to shrink to about the size that her's likely was. My eyes (probably) glazed over a bit and I pronounced - oracle like - "is it Truth by Peter Temple?"

"Yes! Yes that's it!!" Now. There's another book... [again, the pause]. It was recently made in to a movie [another pause]... it's got an animal in the title".

"Ummmm.... is it fiction or non-fiction?" I asked, mostly to play for time.

"Fiction, it's fiction It's definitely fiction. It's got an animal in the title.... a tortoise. It's something about a tortoise".

"Ohhh. Um well I'm not sure that I... (at this point I remembered to forget my brain again) ... Hedgehog! It's The Elegance Of The Hedgehog".

(Modesty prevents me from accurately recording all the fabulous things she said about at this point but please, let you imaginations run wild).

And that, folks, is why I get paid such an obscene amount of money*.

The End

*poetic license may have been taken to the extreme.

Please Note

2010-07-11T08:53:00.001+10:00

I have not read the following books:
1. Shantaram (life is too short to be reading 933 pages of quasi-biographical fiction-esque pap*)
2. the Stieg Larsson triology
3. Harry Potter (there are movies after all)
4. The Secret (the real secret is that she only wrote the book to make money, not to help you)
5. The Alchemist (A "fable about following your dreams". I am allergic to fables; they give me a temperature and an unsightly rash)

I have no desire whatsoever to read these books. If you reccommend any of the above for my reading pleasure I will lose the small amount of respect I had for you to begin with. I may even fart in your general direction.

At a rough guess, I would estimate about 100 people have bought a Stieg Larsson book from me while saying breathlessly "you HAVE to read them!!!". If any of you are reading this I say to you "No I don't. Piss off and let me stare aimlessly at the wall in peace while thinking about recipes that include potato and cheese".

*yes, I am writing this at work and yes, I got up and walked over to the shelf to check how many pages are in that book.

Top 5... Rules For Life

2010-06-23T08:58:00.000+10:00

When it comes to life, I have some firm rules. I think if everyone followed them then I wouldn't be able to feel so superior which would be a pity because I quite like that about myself (second on the list of Best Things About Me, just after "How I Made Gumbo Twice This Year Already And It Was Awesome Both Times" and just before "My Immense And Selfless Modesty"). However, I will share my top five rules for the edification of those discerning enough to read this blog:

1. Never, ever drink instant coffee because it tastes like glue mixed with dirt and a bit of gravox.

2. If you don't understand the title of the job in the ad then you shouldn't apply for it.

3. Don't trust a man if you can't see his eyebrows.

4. Refuse all offers of friendship from the following: people who don't have earlobes, people who ignore punctuation, people with weird facial hair, people who have to buy two pairs of different sized shoes because they have one foot much larger than the other, people who bustle about, people under the age of 65 who use the phrase "of an evening", people who constantly talk about other people's "bits", people who wear brown shoes with black pants, people who wear socks and sandals, people who don't believe in evolution, people who are allergic to 6 or more things, close talkers, vegans, climate change sceptics, homophobes, racists, Basques, Spaniards, Inuits, Maltese and people from the Natal region of South Africa.

5. Never use your bum as a vase.

The Only Chef In The Village

2010-06-14T20:32:00.000+10:00

I now work in a very different village from the one where I worked with The Only Gay in The Village but we have a resident Only. He is a chef or - in his words - "a CHEFFFF!!"

He is a regular (or should that be irregular ?) customer. He only ever buys cooking books, and never loses an opportunity to drop into the conversation something about his profession and how subsequently superior that makes him. A typical response to a relatively inane comment from me about cooking something from the book he has just bought goes a bit like this: "I'm a CHEFFF. It's what I DO. See? I COOK for a LIVING."

I happen to know that he is only a CHEFFF in the local PUB which is not really all that GLAM. I know he thinks I am SCHTUPID because I am not a CHEFF. Poor little dear.

Why Are People So Slow To Recognise My Genius?

2010-06-12T15:11:00.003+10:00

My idea for a series of children's books based on Shakespearean characters has been rejected by all the publishers I sent it to. I was going to start off with one about Lady Macbeth and I wanted to call it Out Damn Spot.

It's Official:

2010-06-04T16:47:00.002+10:00

The world now has one too many memoirs of the Middle East Experience written by a Western journalist or aid worker... which is a pity because whether or not they are worthy, well written, important documents or a combination of all 3, nobody actually wants to read them. Trust me, in 3-6 months from now I will be one of the poor suckers pulling the stickers off and sending them back to the publishers to be pulped.

Teetering Precariously On The Brink Of Too Many: Muslim women speaking out.

So Far Beyond Ridiculous And Through The Other Side That It Has Created It's Own Genre And Booksellers No Longer Even Bother To Cringe When A New One Arrives: Women who move to Italy or France.

Dear Mirvac Shopping Centre

2010-05-24T21:35:00.002+10:00

Dear Mirvac Shopping Centre,

I have had a really great idea for a contraption that I think you could use in your Broadway Shopping Centre. I think it would be an ace alternative to your leaf blower that your staff like to use on the outside ramp at one a.m. on Monday mornings. I live quite near that ramp so I have been able to closely observe the flaws with your leaf blower. First of all, it is very loud and it wakes up the neighbours (ie me). The essential problem is that a leaf blower is nothing more than a reverse vacuum cleaner. Vacuum cleaners are quite good machines so if you take the basic principle and make it go backwards then ... you're totally fucking it up. Anyway, here is a picture of a prototype that I have developed that I think you should consider using:

Give me the nod and I will swing it into production and you can have a 10% discount.

Thanks, Felix

Top 5... Songs That Have Been Stuck In My Head This Week

2010-05-13T10:29:00.001+10:00

1. Buttons (the Sia one, not the Pussycat Dolls one. Although I keep wondering if my subconscious will make the connection. I hope not)

2. The theme from The Nanny

3. Buttons, by Sia

4. Buttons, by Sia

5. Sia - I am going to fucking kill you!

Praise The Lord!

2010-05-11T17:51:00.001+10:00

Last Night I went on a Biblical shopping expedition. I bought bread and wine.

When Sleeping Becomes An Extreme Sport

2010-05-09T18:25:00.003+10:00

Tallboy and I recently went to the mountains for a mini holiday. Being poor, and having great senses of humour, we decided to stay in a place that looked exactly like Fawlty Towers. It turned out to be exactly like Fawlty Towers if it had been run by one of the characters from Are You Being Served?

The bed was like an obstacle course for some kind of obscure European sport - a cross between curling and rock climbing. There was a 35 degree gradient towards the middle of the bed. I kept waking up at odd hours from dreams that were based on Indiana Jones type movies where I was hanging by the fingers from the edge of a pit full of boiling lava. Then a car horn went off across the street and kept going until the battery ran out. There were more crazy things about the place but I am too tired to bother writing any more.

Today Was A Good Day Because:

2010-05-03T21:22:00.000+10:00

1. I woke from my dream this morning and retained the most brilliant idea that my subconscious has ever created: I need to buy a special new cake of soap that smells different from the current one. It might not sound like much but I am convinced that it will complete my life in ways I never knew were flawed.

2. I realised Marieke Hardy has become a fan of my blog! In this month's Frankie she spent several lines discussing "Two Thousand and Zen". That's totally my line and not at all derivative of my friend Hells Bells' adoption of "Two Thousand Mine" a little over 12 months ago.

3. I am now totally across all current fashion trends. I have just watched several back to back episodes of America's Next Top Model. The two "chaahck-let girls" are competition for each other. They go to New Zealand where people think they are " rilly sixy". I also learnt that "while sheep might be difficult to tell apart, it doesn't work for a top model". This show should be on every high school syllabus. It's not just entertaining, it's educational. And that's extremely important if you want to be intellect.

4. I now only talk to cats on facebook, not people. It solves everything.

5. I am not going bald, but my nemesis is.

Today Was A Bad Day Because:

2010-04-08T18:53:00.003+10:00

1. I woke from my dream just before I was about to eat a white chocolate cream and pear eclair. Or maybe it was a white chocolate, cream, and pear eclair. I don't know because I never got to taste it and there was no punctuation in my dream. Can somebody please hurry up and invent this so that I can eat it because it looked AMAZING!

2. I remembered that I am not Marieke Hardy. She's bloody perfect: cute, sexy, funny, clever, writes for frankie magazine and sits around on TV talking about books.

3. I realised that I am completely out of the fashion loop because I do not have a Kim Jong-Il zip up tracksuit in my wardrobe.

Some Letters From St Felix To The All And Sundrians

2010-04-01T19:11:00.002+11:00

Dear Lady Who Came Into My Shop And Asked Me To Zip Up Your Dress,

You're weird.

Love, Felix

Dear Cockroach I Killed This Morning,

I know that you can't read this because a) you're a cockroach and b) you're dead but I though a short note would be a convenient medium for me to tell my readers that I killed you by dropping a bag of money on you. This amused me greatly and I feel it could serve as some kind of metaphor in a piece of highbrow, postmodern fiction. If I ever get around to writing such a work you can be assured that you will live in posterity among the great bugs of literature, like the one in Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Love, Felix

Dear Bertoni Baristas,

I've got you sussed: I have managed to decode the little squiggles you write on the coffee cups so I know they say the colour of whatever the person ordering is wearing. This makes it look like you remember them as indiviuals when their coffee is ready when actually you are just looking at their tops. As well as this, it means you can look at all the ladies' boobs.

I still haven't figured out how you manage to convince so many people that sitting on upturned milk crates is a cool and comfortable alternative to actual chairs. But you've managed it somehow so snaps to you.

Love, Felix

P.S. when you say "ciao" and "bella" it doesn't make me believe you are Italian. Nice try though.

A Quality Education

2010-03-23T17:26:00.002+11:00

I spent my entire 13 years of schooling in the Catholic Education System. It occurred to me the other day that the pinnacle of my primary and secondary education combined was the time a heavily pregnant ex-nun put condoms on the bottom of chair legs in our year 10 Science class.

Bilingual Jane Tells It Like It Is

2010-03-03T16:23:00.002+11:00

Taxi driver at 1.30am on a country road: *&%#$@*%$#*@#!!!!!

Bilingual Jane: So you've had a busy night, have you?

Taxi driver at 1.30am on a country road: I've been so busy I haven't had time to scratch m'self!

Bilingual Jane: Hmmm. You really need to make that a priority.

Trends for Spring/Summer 2010

2010-02-28T19:15:00.000+11:00

Bland is IN. Wear as much pale grey and beige as you can get your hands on.

The Low Maintenance Girlfriend is OUT, the High Maintenance Girlfriend is IN. This means men must adopt hangdog expressions and learn to quietly sympathise with one another, and women must forget anything they ever knew about football, and get manicures.

Wigs are IN, Real hair is OUT.

Dickens is IN, Dostoevsky is OUT.

Trees and Greg Combet are IN, Bonsai and Peter Garrett are OUT (they don't do enough for the environment).

Tilsit is the new Manchego, Ritalin is the new Codral, and Desalination Plants are the new Warner Brothers' Movie Worlds.

Keep It Simple Kids

2010-02-23T21:05:00.001+11:00

I am a brilliant over-achiever. It is not even March and I have already fulfilled my New Year's Resolutiuon for Two Thousand Zen. Unlike last year where I set myself a list of endless herculian tasks (like bumping into less things), this year I took the KISK approach: Keep It Simple Kids. It totally paid off! My resolution was to make gumbo which I have wanted to do for years, mostly because it is called gumbo. And I made gumbo on Friday night. It was edible and everything!

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

I have a friend called Justin Timberlake* and he is bringing sexy back. Sexy went to visit the penguins at the zoo but got lost, and didn't have any money for a bus ticket home again. Justin Timberlake's generosity doesn't stop there though - he also has a brilliant idea to bring together lonesome (but quite hot) single people and has asked me to advertise his plan on this blog. Bless you, Justin Timberlake**,for the vote of confidence but this blog only has a readership of about 6 people*** so it probably won't do much good.

Nevertheless, I promised so here we go: Flash Mob Single's Night. Woo hoo! It's so brilliant I don't know why it hasn't been done yet. The idea is simpler than my attempt to make it somehow make sense under the blog title Keep It Simple Kids (not hard). Let me explain: you collect a database of (hot) single people, you inform them via some form of new-fangled media of the time and location of the flash mob, and they all turn up and mill around the previously specified location. Pretty much everyone there will be Single and Looking. And quite hot. There is so much scope for metaphorical fireworks that Justin Timberlake might even organise actual fireworks. If not, I am sure he will at least make sure there is a bar that stocks good quality gin.

So if you are a hot single person and you are interested then please let me know and I will pass your details on to Justin Timberlake. If you don't totally fit this description but are still interested then please still get in touch. Well, I mean if you are not single but you have a loser boyfriend you want to ditch then you still qualify, but you really do have to be hot. It's not that ugly people don't hook up with one another, but it's just that Justin Timberlake has a very high sense of visual aesthetic and is easily upset by things like people who don't have symmetrical faces or people with moles that have hair growing out of them.

In conclusion: If you want to feel ahead of the game then keep New Year's Resolutions short, sweet and pretty damn easy. If you want to be in the game then get yourself to a flash mob singles event near you and finally, whatever you do, don't bother trying to make a line of little stars on your blog look symmetrical and even because it is a bloody waste of time and your time is more valuable than that. You should be spending your time watching Project Runway and drinking the wine that Tallboy left behind at your flat on the weekend because it really is quite nice and it will go off before Thursday when you and Tallboy are having dinner together next.

* Not his real name

**Not your real name

***Naturally, this is an underestimate for the purposes of comedic value, but not by very much

Five Things I Have Learnt This Year

2010-02-07T20:56:00.002+11:00

1. Marrickville and Balmain are INNER CITY! I know they are close to the city but I never realised that they were considered inner... I mean, ok, I will concede that to get from Balmain to the city you only need to go one bus stop but the bus goes on a big, concrete freeway type thing, there is open space, and you must cross water*.

2. Tall Boy likes to put things on his head.

3. Two year old boys can never have too many diggers. Toy diggers, imaginary diggers, drawings of diggers that their relatives have been press-ganged into drawing all elicit the same response, namely, "DIGGER!! MORE Digger!!!"

4. When soaked heavily in soy sauce, sugar, sesame seeds and about twenty other masking ingredients tofu is delicious!

5. Julian Clary is gay. Who knew?

* I am aware that this sounds a bit like a fortune teller's prediction. I don't care. In fact, I kind of like it that way.

All-Time Bestsellers

2010-01-31T13:54:00.000+11:00

On Sundays, it is my job to produce a bestseller list from the previous week's sales at work. I thought I could employ some timesaving nous and I have come up with a long-term bestseller list that will serve for many weeks without having to be changed. This will give me more time to stare at the walls and think about shoe grip, chocolate body paint, Britney Spears' devolution into craziness, and other similarly important things. I had the help of a fellow staff member*, who suggested the categories to replace the more usual Fiction/Non-Fiction binary. Here it is, the Almost Perpetual Bestseller List:

METAPHORICAL
1. The Art of Hornet's Nests - Dalai Larsson
2. The Girl With The Happiness Tattoo - Dalai Larsson
3. 1001 Coming of Age Stories to Read Before You Die - Various
4. The Girl With The "Free Tibet" Tattoo - Dalai Larsson
5. Mastering The Art of French Cussing - Naughty Child

NON-METAPHORICAL
1. Eat, Prey, Leave - Hannibal Lecter
2. Apples, Acne and Cholera - Alexander Marquez Smith
3. He's Just Not That Into You (Or Your Desire For An Equal, Adult and Mutually Fulfilling Relationship) - Hugh Hefner
4. The Satanic Fishes - Salmon Rushdie
5. Don't Sweat The Small Stuff: Use Deoderant! - Patrick Suskind

*But obviously all the really funny ones are mine.

200-Mine: A Wrap-Up

2010-01-21T11:50:00.000+11:00

Most Triumphant Moment of Traditional Gender Role Subversion I Witnessed:
My Cousin's two year old son throwing a tantrum, and subsequently being allowed to wear his younger sister's new pretty pink dress for about two hours on Christmas morning.

Best Text Message I Recieved:
Got the anchovies. Quit My job.

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Me. (who's surpirised??)
I could give myself this award many times over but I think my best performance was in continually finding different ways to avoid telling people who bought Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall that I got halfway through and gave up because I thought it was crap and boring... cut off my legs and call me Shorty if I didn't just sell a copy of that book in the middle of sneakily typing this at work!

Desalination: Not a Laughing Matter

2010-01-09T08:14:00.000+11:00

I was looking forward to my trip to the desalination plant with Tallboy and his family because I agreed to go on the condition that I enjoy free reign to write up the experience in my blog.

Once at the plant, we all got to wear hardhats and flurescent vests and stamp about gravelly ground in steel capped boots while looking at pipes and holes in the ground but I can't make that sound especially humourous. Essentially, desalination plants are not very funny. At all. The best I can come up with is to accidently on purpose leave out the "L" from time to to time and spent the rest of the post discussing desalination pants.

Desalination pants use a process of "reverse osmosis". After the desalination pant we went to a winery for unch. It was very peasant.

"Adelaide: No Convicts and No Fruitfly"

2009-12-23T19:30:00.002+11:00

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

2009-12-15T13:51:00.002+11:00

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

2009-12-09T14:53:00.002+11:00

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

2009-12-05T17:26:00.000+11:00

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

2009-11-06T09:49:00.000+11:00

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

2009-10-18T10:14:00.003+11:00

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!!!!!

2009-10-16T14:03:00.002+11:00

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

2009-10-08T16:06:00.000+11:00

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

2009-09-23T15:28:00.002+10:00

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!

2009-09-14T20:41:00.002+10:00

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.

2009-09-08T19:51:00.003+10:00

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?

2009-09-03T20:45:00.002+10:00

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:

2009-08-19T15:42:00.000+10:00

Giraffes in leather chaps

Bilingual Jane Strikes Again

2009-08-11T18:45:00.000+10:00

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

2009-08-05T16:19:00.002+10:00

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

2009-08-01T12:36:00.002+10:00

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

2009-07-30T15:41:00.000+10:00

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

2009-07-22T15:54:00.002+10:00

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.

2009-07-20T17:09:00.003+10:00

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...

2009-07-13T13:43:00.003+10:00

…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

2009-06-20T16:50:00.003+10:00

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

2009-06-17T19:13:00.002+10:00

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

2009-06-10T11:51:00.003+10:00

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

2009-06-04T11:46:00.001+10:00

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

2009-06-03T11:19:00.002+10:00

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

2009-05-24T14:59:00.002+10:00

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

2009-05-17T11:17:00.003+10:00

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

2009-05-04T10:40:00.000+10:00

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

2009-04-24T13:37:00.001+10:00

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

2009-04-20T14:34:00.001+10:00

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

2009-04-19T15:12:00.000+10:00

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

2009-04-06T12:36:00.001+10:00

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

2009-04-02T17:06:00.001+11:00

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

2009-03-27T11:18:00.002+11:00

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?

2009-03-26T10:03:00.000+11:00

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

2009-03-23T11:20:00.000+11:00

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

2009-03-14T11:44:00.000+11:00

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...

2009-03-13T11:41:00.001+11:00

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!

2009-03-10T14:10:00.002+11:00

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

2009-02-17T17:37:00.000+11:00

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

2009-02-16T15:15:00.002+11:00

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

2009-02-09T11:30:00.002+11:00

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'

2009-01-31T16:38:00.000+11:00

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!

2009-01-30T16:32:00.001+11:00

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

2009-01-29T16:33:00.000+11:00

(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

2009-01-12T14:57:00.003+11:00

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

2009-01-05T23:03:00.002+11:00

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

2009-01-02T23:25:00.002+11:00

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".

The Shame Files #2

2008-12-19T14:56:00.000+11:00

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

2008-12-16T12:29:00.002+11:00

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

2008-12-04T12:40:00.003+11:00

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.