Benzophenone
For the first few days this week I was wondering where my pay was from my one day of temp work last week. I rang up my temp agency and they told me that the pay would be in later that afternoon, which it wasn’t. I checked again on Thursday and discovered I had double the amount of money I was supposed to. I thought I’d double check where it came from.
It turns out that half of the money that went into my account that day was for my temp work, and the other half was from the company I worked for a few weeks ago, then decided I didn’t like the job and basically didn’t go back. I’m pretty impressed that they paid me because I didn’t really expect them to.
I’ve been trying to convince Adam to drive my car. The only licence he has is an expired motorbike learner’s licence, but I think that’s good enough.
Me: Just pretend it’s a motorbike - with two extra wheels and more comfortable seats!
Adam refuses, because if he gets a criminal record he won’t be able to get a security licence for his bouncer job. I just think he’s scared. He, he, he. Well, actually, he is. He told me that my car was a ‘death trap’, which I am greatly offended by. My Datsun Sunny never hurt anyone. Yet.
My car really is going to break down and never start again one day soon. Every time it starts making weird noises (which is a lot of the time) I think ‘this is it!’ I think Adam’s worried that the car will break down every time we drive somewhere. On the way to the supermarket, we drove past three cars that had broken down.
Me: I think this is a sign. I think my car’s going to break down tonight.
Adam: DON’T SAY THINGS LIKE THAT!
We eventually arrived at the shopping centre where the supermarket is located. As we got out of the car, we spotted a Ricky Martin tryhard heading towards the entrace of the shopping centre. We couldn’t help but follow him - I love following idiots like this around. Despite the fact the weather was pretty chilly at that time of night he was walking around in his Bonds singlet. Strangely, when he got into the shopping centre he put his coat on, but took it off about fifteen seconds later. He even had a little oh-so-fashionable beret on! I wasted a little too much time following him around.
We then went to the newsagent in the shopping centre, where I bought a copy of internet.au magazine. (This bit’s important! You’ll see later. Well, not greatly important, but… er… yeah).
There’s something strangely inticing about doing your weekly supermarket shopping late at night. It’s eerily deserted, and the products have usually just been freshly re-packed onto the shelves. You also tend to have druggos hanging around the chips, confectionary and Spring Valley Fruit Juice aisles - not to mention the bakery section. (They’re usually floating around looking for bags of donuts that have been reduced in price to fifty cents because the use-by date is tomorrow).
Do you know where the strangest parts of large supermarkets are? The four corners of the building. They’re just weird. At the supermarket we go to, in one far corner you’ve got strange seeds that I’m sure a bird would be far better off eating than a human. In another corner, you’ve got a fridge cabinet full of Coke. The thing is, this Coke is so far away from absolutely ANYTHING, not one bottle has been taken out of the cabinet. I wonder how old the bottles are. It’s probably the Coke mix from when they used to put cocaine in it.
In another corner you’ve got Ugly Mops (the mops so ugly that they’ve been exciled from the regular mop section) and another corner even I’m not sure - I haven’t been there. It’s near the canary seed though, so maybe it’s bird-related.
I don’t like it when people mess around with my finances at shops, when I pay with my bank EFTPOS card. Things like this make me wonder what’s really going on:
Me: (hands over EFTPOS card)
Checkout chick: Is that a savings, cheque or credit account?
Me: Savings.
Checkout chick: Any cash out with that? (Note: this is the supermarket equivalent of asking if you want fries)
Me: No thanks.
Checkout chick: And do you have a Fly Buys card? Eh? Do ya? You can join up right here at the checkout you know, and you’ll get 100 bonus points. So do you have a card? Do ya do ya do ya? You get free flights. And stuff. Have you got-
Me: Oh for Christ’s sake. Yes I have a Fly Buys card. (hands it over)
Checkout chick: (scans my EFTPOS card through, presses a few buttons, waits a few seconds then frowns) Oh.
Me: Hmm?
Checkout chick: Uh… (worried look) just one moment. (presses button to call over supervisor)
I don’t like it when things like this happen! I think something’s gone wrong with my EFTPOS, like they’ve taken out too much money by mistake or something. What made it rather suspicious is that the checkout chick and her supervisor ummed and ahhed over whatever problem had occured with my card for about five minutes, before the supervisor gave me a receipt with no EFTPOS details on it and said ‘Well, it’s gone through, so don’t worry.’
The only reason I really worry about things like this is because I worked at a uni last year, often when students bought textbooks and stuff they’d pay for it with credit card or EFTPOS. We had to type in how much money was to be taken from their credit card or EFTPOS card, except sometimes I’d stuff up and type in an extra number by mistake. Well, YOU try explaining to a poor, starving uni student that you’ve just accidentally charged them $3500 for a $35 textbook.
So we got back home and unpacked all our shopping, and I started eating one of the Dany chocolate dessert things I got. Those things are so yummy, they’re like yoghurt - but they’re chocolate! I personally abhor yoghurt, but this Dany stuff I like. I guess it’s Jeb Yoghurt. Adam reckons that they’d taste nice if they were frozen. I think he’d be able to come up with better culinary ideas if his brain was frozen.
I mentioned earlier that I bought a copy of internet.au magazine. On the front of every issue you get a CD-ROM of software - it’s stuck to the magazine using this weird kind of stretchy silicon glue stuff. I was happily typing away on my computer when Adam runs in and has a commando attack on me, shoving the silicon glue stuff on my face. It looks remarkably like snot, which is probably why he found it so funny.
Of course, I had to have my revenge, so I chased him around with the ’snot’, threatening to shove it down his shirt. Trying to put things down the shirt of a martial arts expert is not an area I am well trained in, so it was rather difficult. This bit of glue kept us amused for far longer than it should have. It went on for a good half an hour, throwing it at each other and putting it down each other’s tops until Adam took it too far and managed to put it down the back of my jocks, at which point I cracked the sads because I couldn’t find where it went. Then Adam started calling me the ‘bum snot man’ or something and ran away to play with his computer.
Later that night I found the bum snot glue thing stuck to the ground, so I calmly went up to him and put it down his shirt. I think I got revenge.
Adam bought some jocks, and on the pack it says ‘Satisfaction guaranteed, or your money cheerfully refunded’.
Checkout chick: Can I help you?
Me: Yes. I’d like my money back on these jocks, thanks.
Checkout chick: What was wrong with them?
Me: Well, there wasn’t anything technically wrong with them, but…
Checkout chick: … yes?
Me: They weren’t exactly satisfying.
Checkout chick: Oh.
Me: And it says right here I can get my money back.
Checkout chick: Well… hrmm… (studies packet) I suppose I’ll be able to do that for you, then.
Me: Thank you.
Checkout chick: (grumbles under breath)
Me: Oi! You have to be cheerful about this, you know!
The other day I spotted a postie who’d parked his motorbike on the pavement, and it looked like all of his mail had fallen out of his bags. I bet this is the guy who went for the postie job that I almost applied for - I’d be doing far worse than he was, though. If that was me, not only would everything have fallen out, it would have sponatenously combusted, too.
Adam starts his new graphic design job on Monday. All the train conductors in Sydney were going to go on strike on Monday, but they’ve called the strike off, unfortunately. That could’ve been a bad start to his first day.
Adam also usually has his bouncing job on Saturday nights, but he can’t work tonight. Adam doesn’t have his security license just yet, but the pub he works at is employing him anyway. The pub’s having a security check by the authorities tonight so Adam can’t really work, or he’d get fined $5000. I find it a bit silly that the pub KNOWS they’re going to have a security check - surely it’d be better if they just arrived unannounced?
And secondly - if they came along and found an unlicensed bouncer on the premises, what are they going to do? Attempt to kick the BOUNCER out of the pub? I’d like to see that. I reckon if you questioned a bouncer over his licence he’d just beat you up anyway.
Adam was looking at some web pages a few days ago to get ideas for his own page, and said something about how ‘a picture tells a thousand words’.
Me: That’s such a load of crap, that saying.
Adam: No it’s not! I can look at this picture on this girl’s page and it tells me all sorts of stuff.
Me: Like what?
Adam: Well, she’s caucasian, she has nice hair, she, er… um..
Me: Only 994 words to go!
I’m not sure if Adam is ready for me to announce this to the world or not, but… Adam likes Michael Jackson. He claims it’s because he’s such a good dancer, but trust me. A whole day’s worth of the early works of Michael Jackson accompanied by Adam’s high pitched Michael Jackon karaoke voice I can do without.
There was a Beastie Boys video clip on Rage last night. After I saw it I had to go and play Beastie Boys CD’s at 3am in the morning and jump around and wave my hands around. They have this affect on me.
You know, there’s me with a handful of skills trying to find work in Sydney - and then there’s the Beastie Boys who YELL to make a living.
Almost every second day I log onto the net, I get a little popup window advising me that there are new updates for Windows available for download. Windows Update is a ’service’ provided by Microsoft to update and repair any bugs in Windows. Basically it’s just a way for them to fix up all their security stuff ups easily. The website for Windows Update looks like this:
But I personally believe it should look like this:
I was almost going to write something along the lines of ‘Why do we close the toilet door when we know everyone we live with anyway?’ - but I thought better of it. Actually, do you know what really irritates me? When you press the toilet flush button and walk away, but then it hardly flushes at all, and you realise you pressed it too quick or didn’t hold the button down for long enough.
While we’re on the subject of bathroom issues that I’m narky about, isn’t it convention that shampoo bottles are made in a darker colour than their corresponding conditioner bottles? The shampoo/conditioner brand I use, the conditioner bottle is darker, so I always go to conditionerise my hair (little of it there is) first before I shampoo it. BAHHHHH!
Yes, there’s starving children in Africa, but Jeb’s pissed off about the colour of shampoo bottles.
The soapy hand lotion stuff we just bought this week has brought back all sorts of memories to me. It smells exactly like the bushes we used to have at my primary school. I remember I used to hide in those bushes when we played hide and seek or chasey, and I’d always get bitten by ants. Or I’d sit in dog poo by mistake or something. Er, but these are good memories. I think.
So according to the hand lotion label, the bushes I used to hide in were made of water, sodium laureth sulphate, cocomide DEA, propylene glycol, cocomidopropyl betaine, glycerin, PEG-120 methyl glucose dioleate, hdyroxypropyl guar hydroxyproxyltrimonium chloride, disdoium EDTA, benzophenone-1, and lots of other chemically type things.
In fact, I think that’s what I’m going to call my mate Ben from now on. Benzophenone.