Mystery Black Spot
KFC - it’s not bad, every now and then. Golden chickeny goodness, with… actually, chicken isn’t naturally golden, is it? Hmm.
KFC are always spouting on about their secret herbs and spices - the colonel’s secret recipe and all that. Well, I reckon our local KFC store has lost the secret recipe because all their chicken tastes foul. It’s not crispy so much as batter-sparingly-stuck-on-to-chicken. I reckon they’ve lost the secret recipe that was sent to them by KFC HQ and they’re too scared to tell them in case they get in trouble.
Did you know that when you pour the breakfast cereal Nutri-Grain into a toilet, it takes 4 flushes until it goes away? Nutritious, full of fiber, and absorbant too!
Speaking of food, when I lived at home my parents strictly bought margarine. No butter whatsoever. I had butter once at a friends house and it excited me to the highest level that dairy products can possibly excite. I have always wanted butter since then. Butter is good and yummy and it gives you that extra bit of salt you just can’t normally get at breakfast.
When I moved up to Sydney to be with Adam, I suddenly realised I could HAVE butter. I was free of the breakfast dictatorship that was my mother. I thought that I’d savour the excitement by firstly purchasing I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, which as far as I can gather is some sort of butter/margarinal hybrid. (Margarinal… why does that sound rude?)
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter was good… but it wasn’t quite the butter pinnacle I was expecting. I needed the hard stuff. I needed something that came direct from a living, breathing animal’s innards. I needed the real thing: butter.
I made an expedition and bought butter. It came in an exciting blue and green package. A siloutte of a cow promised me that it was full of dairy goodness. (The cow siloutte wasn’t actually on the package - I saw him while I was walking home. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you take too much acid).
We put the butter in the fridge and slept in anticipation of breakfast (don’t ask me how you anticipate things while you sleep. I already typed it and I can’t be bothered deleting it). Adam wakes up before me every morning. As I was rolling around in bed I heard him cursing ‘Fucking dildo!’ in the kitchen. He left for work abruptly.
I eventually awoke, had a shower, then put some bread in the toaster. When it popped out, I could barely contain my excitement. It was Butter Time. (Butter Time is like Hammer Time, but less oily and more spreadable).
I attempted to spread some butter with my knife but I couldn’t seem to pierce the butter’s surface. Soon I was the one yelling ‘fucking dildo’ at the butter. It was like trying to spread concrete. I had to dig into it and pull some out, then when I put it on the toast, it was so hard that it ripped the bread in half. I was very disappointed and let down. We decided to leave the butter out to see if it would soften up, but it’s been on our bench for six days and it’s still strong enough to qualify as military technology.
Butter - you have disappointed me. I wanted butter to be good. Oh, butter, why did you have to be such a dildo? All my life I have looked forward to an enjoyable breakfast every day… but no. My only hope lies in finding a soft spreadable butter next time I visit the supermarket (and maybe the siloutte cow will visit me again too).
*****
In more food angst, I had some honeycomb flavoured milk this week. Adam bought chocolate flavoured milk. They were the same brand, but the design of Adam’s milk carton was a bit different to mine. We thought this was a bit odd, but drank them anyway. When I got to the bottom of my drink there were chunks in it. I don’t know what the chunks were because I spat them out in the toilet. We discovered the reason the milk carton designs looked so different is that mine was months older than Adam’s.
And just how does milk get chunky anyway? Actually, I remember when I was in year 9 or something like that, one student went away on a round-the-world holiday for a whole term. We thought it would be really funny if we spilt some choc-berry flavoured milk in his locker just after he left, so when he got back it would be all sticky. The problem was, the milk started stinking out the whole locker area. It got that bad you’d feel nauseated just checking your locker. Someone eventually got the guts to break into the guy’s locker, and we discovered the choc-berry milk had mutated into choc-berry cheese.
*****
I was waiting at a train station last week quite late at night. There weren’t many people around. I was standing there when this really rugged, rough guy started staggering towards me. He looked like he was about to mug me so I got a bit worried, but there were security guards around (somewhere) so I didn’t panic too much. He slowly walked up to me, looked at me with pained eyes from under a tattered beanie, and asked quietly:
Tattered beanie man: Y’got dollar forty? I’m really hungry and I want to get a bag of chips.
Normally, I kneejerk and snap ‘no’ to people like this. I often feel terrible about it, but this time was different. Just as I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t have any change…
Tattered beanie man: I’ll play you a song for it.
He had a guitar strapped to his back. It was worn, tattered, one of the strings badly needed replacing and it looked like he had just found it abandoned somewhere. I don’t think he really had anywhere to go, nor many possessions besides his guitar. I was quite taken aback: music is one of the things that keeps me going in life, and I would be more than happy to pay for music.
He asked me, almost scared, what I wanted him to sing. There were many tunes I could’ve asked of him, but I asked him what he liked to play best. What he was good at.
Tattered beanie man: (almost shy) I like the blues a real lot. I’ve made up a few songs of my own.
So play the blues, I told him. From within this quiet, scared man, suddenly projected a powerful voice that gave me a start. I don’t know where he learnt to play the guitar as well as he was playing it. Maybe he had some past that was but a memory from long ago: a memory nobody was to know of but him.
They say you play the blues best if you genuinely do have the blues, and let me tell you, this guy had them good. His song almost made me a bit upset… I could tell this wasn’t the tale of a hypothetical man he was singing of. It was himself.
He finished his song, and was almost embarassed by the people glancing rudely around at him - looking at the loony with the guitar. I thought fuck ‘em. They don’t even know who this guy is. He only wanted $1.50 for some food but I gave him $10 because he was so damn good.
Never in my life have I learnt so strongly that you don’t judge a book by its cover.
Well, that was all serious and stuff wasn’t it? I just wanted to put that experience somewhere because it was one of those mind-blowing things that effects you for ages afterwards. (ie - the opposite of my butter experience). Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into an angst journal. (Even though I have a rather negative entry today as well - but that’s why I seperated it). I’m normally happy and stuff, see. Even when I’m not drinking bourbon.
*****
In Australia at the moment, there are a lot of companies proclaiming that they are the ‘Official Olympics Supplier of (insert goods or service here)’. Eg, McDonalds are the official restaraunt of the Olympics (because they’ve got the healthiest food out). Westpac is the ‘official banking partner’ of the Olympics. Anusol is the ‘official anal pain relief product’ of the Olympics. It’s all getting rather ridiculous. I think I’ll lay claims to being the ‘official gay person living with a guy named Adam who thinks he’s a ninja of the Olympics’. At least I might get a decent chance of getting tickets.
The plug for the sink in our bathroom doesn’t quite fit. When I fill the sink up with water to shave, it slowly starts leaking out. I have to finish my shaving within a few minutes or I’ve got no water left. It’s like a fun little game I play every morning, to try and shave as quickly as possible. Sure, I’ve sustained a few cuts, but it’s all in the name of fun. If only It’s A Knockout was still on air in Australia, this would’ve been right up their alley…
*****
We had two new members of staff join the group I work in this week. I’ve been in training with them - they decided to plonk me in the orientation training seeing as I’ve only been at my work for a month, and have never been formally trained. One woman looked so terrified during the simplest of instructions that she only turned up one day and has been ’sick’ for the rest of the week. We don’t think she’s coming back, she was so worried about everything. The other guy is a DJ but he looks like an accountant. I think he’s not really a DJ but one of those people who plays crowd pleasing music like ‘Celebrate Good Times’ and all that stuff.
I think he’s trying to make me look as bad as possible so Mr Marketing favours him over me in case there’s any promotions that come up. I don’t really like people like this. The thing is he’s only been here for a few days so it’ll be a while yet before Mr Marketing gives him any credibility.
Then again, I haven’t really made myself look like I’m very good at my job. I was demonstrating to the new guy on his first day how I take phone calls, and the first call I took, I promptly hung up on the caller by mistake.
Me: Er… yes, well I hope they call back.
DJ Accountant: (loudly and over my shoulder towards the direction of Mr Marketing) That’s terrible customer service.
Me: I didn’t mean it.
DJ Accountant: Do you do this often? (shakes head) What a bad image we must have.
The thing that irritates me most is that he doesn’t even have customer service experience. At least I’ve had a miniscule year and a half of customer service experience, but this guy has been a chef or something for the past ten years. I wish his new job at my work involved some cooking so I could hang shit on him.
DJ Accountant: (presents plate of food) And… voila, a beautiful meal of French cuisine.
Me: (loudly and over my shoulder towards everyone else working at the company) That’s terrible cooking.
DJ Accountant: Oh, but I did my best.
Me: Do you do this often? (shakes head)
DJ Accountant: Do what?
Me: Cook. You’re shithouse at it. Don’t do it again.
At the start of the day, all the people going into training caught an elevator to the training room - myself included. The DJ Accountant took this chance to remark loudly:
DJ Accountant: Excuse me.
Me: (thinks he’s talking to someone else because he’s on the other side of the elevator)
DJ Accountant: (deadpan) Jeb, is that your name?
Me: Oh? Sorry, what is it?
DJ Accountant: (rather loudly) You’ve got a bit of food on your beard.
Everyone in lift: (makes special effort to turn around in the confined space of the lift to look at the idiot with food on his face)
He could have at least said there was a CRUMB on my beard. Saying that you have FOOD on your face makes you sound like a disgusting grub who’s got half a meal all over themselves. I was rubbing my beard for about half an hour because I couldn’t even find the crumb and got paranoid it was still there. I highly suspect there was no crumb at all, it was part of his little schemes.
*****
We had a number of people come in to teach us during our training. There was one guy who tapped on each of his fingers in turn when he discussing things in point form. For example, he’d say ‘Now firstly…’ and tap his first finger. Then he’d say ‘Secondly…’ and tap his next finger. Except then he kept only tapping his little finger, and he’d tap it so hard it would nearly bend 270 degrees. I’m amazed it didn’t fall off in the process.
I was getting a little bored towards the end of the training because I already knew a lot of the material that was being covered. I started fiddling with two paper clips and making strange shapes with them (I was actually trying to see if you could recreate the Karma Sutra using paperclips). I bent them so much they eventually snapped into three pieces each, so I put them in an empty can of Coke nearby.
Except it wasn’t an empty can of Coke. It was Parappa the Rapper’s can of Coke, not mine. I’d put it in the wrong can. He went to reach for his can and I tried to stop him before he drank out of it, but I would’ve looked stupid yelling out while the training person was teaching us all.
Well, Parappa certainly choked, but he didn’t die.
*****
Jen told me a story this week of the time she applied for a payrise. She’d been on the minimum rate for almost a year working really long hours, and she pretty much expected to get a substantial rise.
Manager: So, Jen. Obviously you’re here about your pay.
Jen: Yes, that’s right.
Manager: Well, I’m so happy to tell you that you’ll now be getting AN EXTRA EIGHTEEN DOLLARS A FORTNIGHT!
Jen: ….
If I was in her position, I would have looked around the room and said ‘Oh, I almost forgot that I was working in a Nike factory there for a moment.’
*****
I woke up on Wednesday so hungry I was retching. I don’t even think I’d eaten dinner the night before. In all my rush to get to the train station I forgot to eat breakfast, so I decided to nick into the petrol station and grab a museli bar or something. Of course, this would be the day the petrol station’s EFTPOS and credit card bank cable connection decided to go down, so the line in the petrol station was huge. By the time I had to get to the train station in about three minutes, when it usually takes me ten. I ran all the way there and somehow managed to get there in time (then again, I should have factored into my calculations that all trains run late in Sydney).
Ash was talking about the Mystery Black Spot while I was waiting at the train station with her the other day. At my train station, if you take a look down the train tracks to see if the train’s coming, there’s this black spot far away down the line that looks like a train. Except it’s not. You’ll always think the train is coming but it’s just this Mystery Black Spot. I don’t even know what the Mystery Black Spot could be because there’s no tunnels around the area. It’s very strange.
*****
Adam decided on the weekend that he’s going to give up his bouncing job on Saturday nights - one, because he wants to have Saturday nights free so he can go out, and two because he’s not credited as a bouncer yet and can get fined $5000. He told me proudly that he wasn’t going to do it anymore, but when the hotel he worked at called him at 7.30am the other day and told him they wanted him to bounce on Saturday night he seemed to agree immediately.
What was the pub doing calling him at 7.30am anyway? Pubs don’t open then.
*****
During training this week we were given lots of free stuff with the company logo on it. We all recieved polo shirts with our company’s logo on it, but they were all in size small. Nobody’s shirt fits them. Giving a size small shirt to Parappa the Rapper is an absolute joke, because when people visit our office they think he’s our in-house bouncer. I guess he can wash his car with it or something.
Eating lunch with Parappa the Rapper can be interesting. I once had KFC with him and he ordered a three piece feed, two Boss Burgers and a junior chicken burger. I swear he almost inhaled them whole. The DJ Accountant is always making jokes that Parappa the Rapper eats small children, but they’re not funny when he makes the same joke every ten minutes.
So our training continued, and a parade of various managers flowed in and out of our training room to tell us all what they did. There was one woman who flared her nostrils for every syllable that she spoke. When it came to words of four syllables or more, her nostrils flared out so much I was worried I would either get sucked in or she’d create a small tornado with the forces of air coming from out her nose.
We had a person from the payroll department come and talk to us, and they were really busy because they had to do an end of month report.
Mr Marketing: Thanks for coming to talk to everyone, I know you’re really busy at the moment.
Payroll lady: Yes, the end of the month is really busy. Quite stressful.
Mr Marketing: Oh well, it’ll all be over soon hey?
Payroll lady: Yes, but unfortunately the end of the month comes around every month.
*****
At work, Jen and I are plotting a coup to take over the office from Mr Marketing. He fully knows of this plan, so it will be fairly useless, but hey - it’s not every day you get to stage a coup. Seeing as neither Jen or myself have any leadership qualities at all, we found a plastic blow-up toy of Mr Blobby from god knows where, and have declared him our leader.
I don’t think many people outside the UK would be familiar with Mr Blobby. He used to be in Noel’s House Party which was screened in Australia really early in the morning a few years ago and is now in a kid’s show in the UK. The Mail Girl (who is from the UK) loves Mr Blobby. He’s very difficult to explain… basically the only word he knows how to say is ‘blobby’ and he just runs around breaking things by accident. He looks like this:
We’ve photocopied the blowup doll and have stuck pictures up of Mr Blobby all around the office. Mr Blobby is a legend.