Yes, Sanitarium, the company responsible for hundreds of products that all taste like vomit. (Ever tried Up & Go Breakfast Drink?) And what about that So Good soy drink? Let me tell you, I think it should be called No Good.

Sadly, the search for full-time work is continuing. However, all is not lost! I’m now with a shiny, new, MUCH better recruitment company. I’ve decided to take temp work for around a month or so, because after that a friend of mine seems fairly sure he can organise a job for me at his work, which would be hell fun. Unless something else comes up in the meantime, of course.

I actually got a phone call from my old recruitment company on Tuesday. I’ve sort of been avoiding them. I know they’re probably pretty pissed off with me, but I DID explain I wasn’t happy with the job they’d placed me in, and they just basically told me to put up with it. If I was still living in Geelong, I probably would - but up here in Sydney I think you can afford to pick and choose, there’s that many jobs. I’m sure I could find a far more satisfying job than typing in names from a list onto a computer.

This phone call from the old recruitment mob was rather unexpected and totally unwanted:

Me: (answers phone) Hello?
Lady from recruitment company who are in it for the money: Oh, hello, is that Jeb?
Me: (wondering who this is) Yes…?
Lady from recruitment company who are in it for the money: It’s such-and-such here from El Crappo Recruitment Company. We’ve heard that you left your position with Generic Company Ltd.
Me: Oh, yes… er… (lies through teeth) I found a job with a friend of mine.
Lady from recruitment company who are in it for the money: (surprised) Oh… really? Er… okay…
(awkward silence)
Lady from recruitment company who are in it for the money: Well, let me put you through to the lady handling you, I’m sure she wants to speak to you… just one moment okay?
Me: Mmmrgh.
Lady from recruitment company who are in it for the money: (puts me on hold)
Me: (hangs up phone)

They didn’t ring back again until Friday, when the woman who was handling me called me back and left an urgent sounding message, claiming she had this FANTASTIC DREAM JOB for me. Hah! I will not go back to the Venus Fly Trap Recruitment Company if they offered me the best job in the world (personal underpants washer to Robb Flynn! ahh).

Actually, no. I’m sure that singers in metal bands aren’t really that hygenic.

After I quit my last job, I went out and found a new recruitment company, who are absolutely fantastic. They really do treat you well. I had a preliminary interview over the phone early this week, and they invited me to come into their city offices to sign up for temp work.

After my previous experience in going to job interviews in Sydney, I was well prepared for any obstacles that could come my way. In the past I’ve gone to interviews drenched in sweat (so I wore a t-shirt underneath my shirt this time), gotten rather lost (had the Sydney street directory in my backpack), caught a late train by mistake (I’d double checked my train times) and been lost for words at interviews (I had everything figured out this time).

However, it’s not as easy as that for me. Something always will go wrong. So what happened, even after all my precaution-taking? Well, on Sydney trains, you can switch what direction the seat is facing. You basically grab the top of the seat and push it in the direction you want it to face, and it does a little somersault twisty thing, and there you go - it’s facing the opposite direction.

I got on the train to the city and decided to switch the direction of the seat. As it flipped over, it whacked me in the crown jewels. Not quite as bad as when I got kicked in the nads on New Year’s Day, but still visiting a level in the department store of pain that I didn’t quite want to visit again.

It seems I am going to always get extreme pain caused to my testicles around major public holidays. So far I’ve been nadded on New Year’s Day, and now Easter. Worse still, Anzac Day is tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be coupled together with Easter for the sake of my private parts. What’s the next public holiday? God, I hope it’s very far away.

Anyhow. I got into the new recruitment place, and the woman who is handling me is very, very nice. She’s making sure she doesn’t place me in any data entry jobs (she actually thought to ask me what jobs I DON’T want), and she understands that I’m going to probably undertake a fulltime job soon, so that this temping thing is only for a little while. But she rings me up almost every day with new jobs. She’s great! She is the Job Goddess. I’ve only had one assignment so far (it was for one day with a major software company), but there’s plenty more lined up. I love the Job Goddess.

Stupid Product #825: Teeth Towels (saw ‘em at the supermarket on Sunday)

I was speaking with Josh on the net the other night, charming young lad. We (somehow or other) agreed that it would be much funnier if people said the word ‘boosies’ (as in breasts) in place of ‘Olympics’. Just think about it!

* ‘Woohoo! I got tickets to the Boosies!’
* ‘Don’t miss Channel 7’s exclusive coverage of the Boosies.’
* ‘I’ve almost collected all of the Boosies Pins! Got them at the Boosies Store.’
* ‘Sydney: The Boosies City’.

Etc etc etc. Actually, when I caught the train to my interview with the recruitment agency, I heard two women talking about Olympics tickets…

Woman with scary hair: So which events did you get tickets to?
Woman who talked too loud for a train carriage environment: Ah, it was the athletics… basketball… and weightlifting.
Woman with scary hair: Ah, so all the good perve sports, then.
Woman who talked too loud for a train carriage environment: You betcha.

Adam got the great job he had the interview for last week! This is great news (although it means he’ll get home VERY late each night - as in 10pm, because he’ll go to the gym in the city every night after work). We went to Torana’s place on Thursday night for some drinks to celebrate, and then went out that night.

When we went to Torana’s, this chubby little guy arrived as well. I didn’t know who he was but he seemed a bit full of himself… and I realised this was most likely Trent, the guy that Adam had told me about (remember? he “had sex with a hairdresser”). So now I’ve met Trent. And yeah, he’s an eensy bit of a bullshit artist, but I can think of worse guys in the world. He said he would meet us down at the club later that night, but he never appeared. Thankfully.

So we went down to the club and I got far, far too drunk. And in one of those things that can only happen when you’re drunk, I SWEAR the bartender woman who served me kept complaining to me that her hair was falling out, and did I know anything that could help it? Maybe this was some sort of come on line I didn’t click onto. I also did something rather stupid that night with some Keno entry forms and those tiny little pencils you get when you’re filling out Lotto forms, but we won’t go into that. Let’s just say I wasn’t using them in the conventional method. A bit embarassing.

Adam said something at Torana’s that at first seemed rather stupid:

Torana: How old do you reckon that guy at the gym, the boxer, how old do you reckon he is?
Trent: Oh, I reckon he’d be probably 39, 40 at least.
Adam: Nahhhhh!
Torana: Why, how old do you reckon?
Adam: He’d be 38 at least.
Me, Trent and Torana: (piss ourselves laughing)

BUT - Adam explained (after we made him feel rather stupid) that most people don’t fight past age 38. Or something.

Torana has also since declared that he wants a pet monkey. (He said this on one of the rare occasions he isn’t drunk, so he probably means it). I think the novelty of a pet monkey would wear off quite soon. And as Adam said, the monkey would surely just run off anyway. I think you need a licence or something, but as Torana said to Adam…

Torana: I wanted a ferret and I got a ferret. And now I want a monkey and I’ll get a monkey.

(I wonder what happened to the ferret). Another funny thing about Torana, is that he’s the only person I know who pretty much won’t drink any cola except Schweppes Cola. And why is this? Because Schweppes Cola is what they serve at the pub. ‘It tastes like pub coke!’

Actually, speaking of cola, I’ve done some investigation on that new brand of cola, ‘LA Ice Cola’. THIS COLA IS A SHAM IN MANY WAYS AND SHOULD BE BOYCOTTED! Just like I boycott Pepsi Max for putting Killing Heidi on their label. I’m sure you’ve seen those LA Ice Cola ads everywhere, with that woman at the concert singing the DELIBERATELY DECEPTIVE CATCHY SONG “L - A - L AAAAAAA-EEEEEE’. So…

1. In the latest ad, LA Ice Cola urge you to buy a bottle of the stuff right now, while it’s still at the “special introductory price”. This special price is $1.20. I believe the special price is actually higher than the recommended retail price, because nobody will buy the shit after the hype wears off.

2. It tastes worse than Schweppes Cola. In fact, any no-name brand cola tastes better than this bland, ordinary crap.

3. In the latest ad, they announce ‘Thank you for making LA Ice Cola Australia’s fastest growing cola’. Now think about it. Of course it’s growing fast. It’s gone from zero sales to thousands in a few weeks - BECAUSE IT’S A NEW PRODUCT. Doesn’t take a genius to realise that of course this makes it the fastest growing cola in Australia. Coke and Pepsi probably only grow at teeny tiny rates each week, because they’re already established products. Wait until next month, and LA Ice Cola’s “growth” will have slowed down rather noticably.

4. They claim they’re ‘rushing new stock of LA Ice Cola to stores to cope with the huge demand’. Go to your local supermarket. If they even stock LA Ice Cola at all, you’ll notice there isn’t really a huge demand at all. (That is, if you can even locate it in the soft drink aisle - it’s stuck up the back near the stuff nobody buys like soda water and flavoured mineral water).

5. On popular cola bottles like Coke, it usually says something like ‘Produced in Australia by Coca-Cola Amatil Bottlers under licence of The Coca-Cola Company’. This means that it’s a big name soft drink licenced out to an Australian company. LA Ice Cola has a name that sounds American, and the ads feature an American voice-over. If you check the LA Ice Cola label, it says ‘Produced in Australia by Pure & Natural Bottlers under licence of the LA Ice Cola Company (patent pending)’. PATENT PENDING?! If it’s already an established American cola (as I’m sure they’re trying to lead us to believe), surely their patent would have been approved a long time ago! I believe that the LA Ice Cola Company is a made up company in Australia, and they’re making it appear like a big US brand name so it sells well. Well, I’m not falling for it. I can’t find any reference on the web to an American LA Ice Cola company. Also, laice.com and laicecola.com aren’t websites.

So there you have it. LA Ice Cola is a piece of crap. If you’re living in America, I’d love to know if there really is such a drink as LA Ice Cola over there, please email me…

As I mentioned earlier, I had a temp assignment on Thursday at a software company. I had to catch a bus to work, and I don’t like catching buses in Sydney because I never know where to get off. At least at train stations, the name of the station is prominently displayed, but buses just stop along streets and I’ve got no idea where I am. It usually means lots of studying of the street directory before I jump on the bus.

I waited in the city to catch my bus at the bus stop, which serviced 8 different bus routes. There was an awfully large amount of people standing around the bus stop, so I assumed they’d all be catching different buses. However, three buses came and left and only one or two people got on them. Then my bus arrived, and the majority of the crowd all roared onto the bus, which meant lots of people standing up in the aisle and me not being able to see where I was. I basically had to guess where to get off.

Once I disembarked, I checked my street directory and it seemed that I had, indeed, gotten off at the right spot. I was in the right part of the highway. Now, all I had to do, was locate the software company. The company was in the middle of a rather large business park.

I’d never really been in a business park before, let alone worked in one. Wow, is all I can say. Beautifully landscaped gardens and waterways; futuristic, towering buildings; lots of expensive cars zooming around - somewhere I never thought I’d have the opportunity to work. In other words: definitely not Jeb Territory. It’s a wonder hardly anything went wrong that day.

Then I noticed that the business park didn’t have any street signs. I had no idea how to get to the street where the software company was located. I walked around aimlessly and asked a few construction site workers how to get to the street, but they had no idea. ‘There’s no street signs around here, so I’m not sure,’ remarked one worker. ‘DUH!’ I felt like replying.

When I realised I only had two minutes left until I was supposed to be at the company, I sat down in the gutter and got out my street directory. I had a look around to try and get my bearings, and realised I was sitting right outside the software company. I’ve got no idea how I got there, but I did. The building itself was wicked inside. I’d love to work in a building like this. It was on the tenth floor up, but the actual building was on a large hill. I got a beautiful view across a valley area all day, plus the office was really well spread out and to be honest, felt quite empty - but I liked it. I even got a passcard with my name on it for the day! That really made me feel like a yuppie for the day.

When it approached to lunchtime, I asked the woman who was supervising me if there was any places to eat in the business park:

Me: Is there anywhere around here I can buy some lunch?
Supervisor woman: Oh, yes, there’s only one cafe in the whole business park. You just go up there (waves arm in three directions), turn that way (waves arm in air) and go up a ramp towards the lake.

With these vague directions, I realised finding the cafe could be as difficult as locating the software company was. However, I cleverly just followed all the other yuppie-types emerging from other buildings, and they all led me to the cafe.

On my way to the cafe, the Job Goddess from the recruitment company rang me up with another job offer. She said she may be able to line up some work for me that’s permanent, doing layout and design for a children’s book publisher. Basically I’d be doing the layout of children’s book covers and stuff. Sounds pretty cool! That’s if I get it. Hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to insert subliminal Satanic messages into children’s picture books.

So I arrived at the business park cafe, and took a look at the menu. The chicken burger didn’t sound too bad, so I ordered one. Except after I ordered it, the woman took my money, mumbled something, then waved her arm in the air. I assumed she meant that she’d bring it out to me, to one of the tables outside.

I sat outside for about five minutes patiently waiting. Then I started wondering if she was going to bring it out to me, or if she had turned her back to get the chicken burger and I’d walked out. I couldn’t see anyone else around me getting their food brought out to them. Had I done something wrong? This WAS the first time I’d pretended to be a yuppie business executive in a high-up business park, anyway. Maybe they did things differently here. What was a reasonable amount of time to wait for a chicken burger to be prepared, anyway? I’d been waiting a little over ten minutes now. Then again, at more high-up eateries, they tend to take a little longer to bring the food out to you, don’t they? Hmm. Still, nobody else around me is getting food brought out to them.

Ahh! The guy next to me doesn’t have any food, either. He must be waiting for his, as well. Oh. Shit. Some other guy just sat down with him, and he’s brought both of them lunch. Where’s my lunch? Maybe I’ll go back inside in a few minutes. I’ll give them five… no, ten more minutes. Half an hour is a reasonable amount of time to prepare a chicken burger, isn’t it? I think I’ll… oh. Here she comes now, with my chicken burger.

So finally my chicken burger arrived. I could see why it took them so long to make. These things were enormous. Absolutely bloody enormous. I picked it up to take a bite out of it, and… it started urinating on my plate.

Well, that’s what it looked like. I guess it was just hamburger juice, onion juice and water from the lettuce all mixed in together. Except it kept pissing, on and on and on. Maybe I was eating it wrong. Nobody else’s hamburger was having a wee-wee all over the plate! Then people started looking at me - the guy with the hamburger that has a bladder control problem. Argh! I ate it up as quickly as possible and finished my lunch, then relaxed in the sun. It was a beautiful environment, the cafe was set on a decking around the edge of a little lake.

Anyway, the chicken burger urination thing didn’t seem so bad in the end, because the guy sitting next to me - his hamburger fell apart (well, exploded is the word I would have used) all over his shirt.

On Wednesday, the day I was at the cafe, by pure coincidence it happened to be Secretary’s Day, when bosses are supposed to reward their secretaries for their hard work. However, at the cafe, all I heard was bosses bitching about their secretaries and how ineffecient they are. (Incidentally, Adam’s work FIRED their secretary on Secretary’s Day. We find this quite funny).

I recommend not drinking Coke for lunch when you’re trying to impress someone at a company. You’ll be midway through sentences and have to disguise burps.

Supervisor woman: So you’re not finding this too hard today?
Me: No, it all seems fairly stroooourrrp… (twists face in attempt to keep burp inside body) … straaaight forward.

Also, don’t eat Bounty chocolate bars at lunch. They gave me a belly ache. Whenever I get a belly ache, just when the ache is at it’s most twisting, gut wrenchingly painful, someone who is over-excessively cheerful usually jumps in my face and I want to punch them.

Me: (writhing around desk with gut pain)
Perky secretary: Oh, you’re the temp here for the daaaay! How’s it goiiiing! Glad to have you heeeeere!
Me: (attempts to smile in midst of agony)

I was doing a large amount of photocopying in the last half of my day at the software company, and the photocopier ran out of toner (powdery black stuff). I went and got my supervisor and explained that there was no toner left. Her eyes went bright wide with horror, and straight away I knew that she was a fellow Toner Accident victim.

Anyone who works in an office should sensibly fear the act of changing toner cartridges in photocopiers. One false move and you’ve got black powder all over you that simply doesn’t wash out. I remember at my first job, my office supervisor Ms. Superiority offered to change the laser printer toner cartridge for me, because she wanted to learn how to do it. She ended up with a white blouse that had toner all over it, and I had toner all over my face, and let me tell you, that stuff doesn’t wash out easily.

So now whenever someone asks me to change a toner cartridge I usually shy away, and I could tell from my supervisor’s expression she’d been in the same situation. I asked her if she’d had a bad experience with toner before, and she confirmed that yes, she’d had a bad toner experience in the past. So we got some other guy to change it for us, and he looked just as scared as we did. Toner is evil.

I didn’t really catch anyone saying stupid things at the software company because I was so far away from everyone, but I did overhear an amusing quote during a meeting in the office next door to me:

Person leading meeting: This is our progress chart.
Another person: So how are we going to use it?
Person leading meeting: Well, it’s a chart, see. And it will track our progress.

I didn’t even eat one chocolate egg this Easter. Me and Adam didn’t really buy anything like that. I’m supposed to be eating LESS chocolate, anyway. I eat enough crap as it is. Adam offered to colour in some of the eggs in the fridge with a thick black marker, but I declined. At least he tried.

However, we deliberately ate eggs for breakfast on Easter. We were thinking about going to buy rabbit for dinner just to be especially mean but… we had KFC instead with Torana. Chicken is sort of close to rabbit, anyway. Then again, who knows if that really is chicken in KFC or not…

After we ate KFC, Adam and I went back to Torana’s where we had a bit of bourbon and played Playstation games, while I showed Torana how to use his computer a bit better than what he does now. He also showed Adam and I some of his naughty pictures, so we had to pretend that we liked girly bits.

You know how there’s a bit of a cultural stereotype that gay people are creative? I think it’s simply because all gay people are fantastic actors. It requires skill to pull off an act like this! (Of course, some people with totally underdeveloped wrist muscles are screwed from the start).

Anyway, Torana’s girly pictures failed to turn me. Especially after seeing what one particular girl could do to herself with an unopened can of Pepsi. God. I don’t think either me, Adam or even Torana could ever drink Pepsi again after seeing those pictures.

Look at this. It’s the label for Voltaren, a cream that you rub on your muscles when they get sore.

I realise that the red stick man in the picture is supposed to look like he has a sore back, but I’ve always thought it looks like he’s dancing. I mean, look at him! He’s just popping funky moves at his local nightclub, not walking around with a sore back. What do you think?

There was a special on TV on the weekend about great hoaxes, which included supposed UFO footage and Bigfoot footage. Some of the commentary on the Bigfoot video amused me:

Announcer #1: Look at him, he looks… looks just like he was made by the hand of God.
Announcer #2: Yes, and he looks real too!

Speaking of big hairy creatures, Adam’s mum has given us this giant rug to put in our living room. However, it looks like the fur of a giant wooly mammoth. It’s very comfy, actually. I think it’s been in storage for a while though, because when we unrolled it, Adam couldn’t stop sneezing for a good few hours and we were forced to leave the home for a while. To go to the pub. (Well, we were FORCED, you see).

Adam’s developing a new habit lately, actually. He has these Secret Sleeps all the time. Sometimes he’ll just disappear and I can’t find where he is. I’ll be looking everywhere for him, then when I check the bedroom he’s gone to sleep in bed. He just nicks off to have these Secret Sleeps every now and then.

Adam and I both bought Magnum ice creams on Friday, and as part of a special deal we also recieved this ice cream for free:

The name of this ice cream is Winner Taco. Personally, I associate the word ‘taco’ with a savoury, meaty, cheesy, vegetably snack - but not ice cream. It is actually in the shape of a taco… but honestly - a taco icecream? Come on.

Adam was cold the other day so I gave him my hooded jumper to wear, and advised that he wear the hood, because the majority of the body’s warmth escapes through the head. He just laughed at me. Now please help me out (both Adam and Torana have ridiculed my head-warmth-escape statements) - it is true that the majority of the body’s heat escapes through the head, isn’t it? I also made a statement that over 70% of material inside your skull is water - is this true as well?

Video Hits had a special edition of their show on Sunday - they were playing video clips that they declared to be ’90’s Anthems’. One of these songs happened to be ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:ream. I don’t know about you, but when I think 90’s, I think D:ream.

However, can they honestly call this a 90’s anthem? I remember in the mid-90’s a lot of people had this song as their funeral song. So maybe it’s a funeral anthem more than a 90’s anthem. But if anyone even DARES playing D:ream at MY funeral, they can expect a very angry poltergeist to totally stuff up their lives.

I saw an ad on TV (I’m watching far too much of the crap, I know) for the APIA (Australian Pensioner’s Insurance Association). Their slogan is Understanding ™. Is it possible to trademark a word? Are they ALLOWED to trademark the word ‘understanding’? Am I breaching copyright by even using the word ‘understanding’ on my page? If this is the case, I’d like to trademark the word “the”. Right now. Thankyou.

The ™. Yes, that has a nice ring to it.

At the local club, me and Adam have to get signed in by Torana because we’re not paid members, and he is. These are the conditions of being a guest of a member:

I think I broke all these rules when we went out drinking.

* ‘Guests must adhere to the directions of the management of the club’? They told us to leave the TAB area half an hour before we actually did.
* ‘Guests must be suitably attired’? I was wearing dirty sneakers, a flannelette shirt and didn’t look very suitable at all.
* ‘This card must always be carried whilst on club premises’? I usually throw my card out as soon as I get in there.
* ‘Guests must remain in close proximity to the member and leave the premises when member leaves’? Remaining in close proximity to Torana is hard to do when he’s running around like a drunken idiot.

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