Things That Go BzzBANG in the Night
This is a ring of Adam’s, featuring the ‘A’ symbol for anarchy.
Adam bought it some years ago because he thought it was a cool ring. He also bought it unaware that it was the symbol for anarchy. He just thought it was the letter A… as in A for Adam. So it became the A for Adam ring. He learnt just the other week from me that it actually means anarchy, but I thought it was kinda funny, so now I wear the ring. To me it just means A for Adam (although when Adam’s excited it comes pretty close to anarchy).
Slow Sally noticed I was wearing a ring at work on Monday.
Slow Sally: Is that a ring?
Me: (amazed by her perceptual abilities) Yes Sally, it’s a ring.
Slow Sally: Ah, ha ha ha ha! So, what’s that symbol on it?
Me: It’s the symbol for.. er… anarchy.
Slow Sally: Anarchy. Oh, well, ah ha ha ha ha!
Me: Yes.
Slow Sally: So… so what is anarchy?
Me: Don’t you know what anarchy is?
Slow Sally: I don’t think so.
Me: Would you like me to show you?
Scooter: (suddenly interjects as if he’s heard some keyword that makes him snap) ANNNAAARRRCHHHYYYYYY!
The DJ Accountant and Slow Sally are dumb. Genuinely dumb. I think Mr Marketing is looking for excuses to fire them. Every telephone call they recieve, they have to ask either myself or Jen what to do. I don’t mind doing this, because it’s the only way they’ll learn to do things. The problem is, we’ll tell them what to do and then they’ll expect us to do it for them. It’s as if I was doing this:
Me: (answers phone) Hello, how can I help you?
Customer: Yes, hi. I was wondering if you could tell me about Product X - I need some prices and specifications.
Me: Why don’t you go down the the bloody shop and just check for yourself, you lazy git?
On Tuesday afternoon, Slow Sally disappeared. She didn’t tell anybody where she was going, she just up and left. Normally we would assume she’d gone to the toilet or something but she was gone for fifteen minutes. Most toilet trips (assuming Slow Sally currently has no bowel/urinary related diseases) last, at the most, around eight minutes. Not that I’m timing my toilet trips or anything.
Mr Marketing was getting a bit edgy about her absence - while she’s away from her phone, everyone on the phone line that she handles remains on hold. He started asking ‘Where’s Einstein?’, which I think is a nice little nickname for her.
Suddenly, from the space where Slow Sally was supposed to be sitting, came a disembodied voice.
Disembodied voice: Hello? …Hello? (sounding lost) Is someone there?
We realised she’d just wandered off mid-conversation and left her speaker-phone on. Swearing, Mr Marketing rushed over to the phone and answered the call. I don’t know what possessed Slow Sally to just walk away from her telephone mid-call and leave it on speakerphone, but that’s the kind of person she is. Mr Marketing hung up and started cursing that when Slow Sally re-appeared, he wanted to have words with her.
Then one of the temps walked into the room with a handbag and hairbrush.
Temp: I found these sitting on the floor in the toilet. Where is the lost and found?
Me: (takes handbag and hairbrush) I bet I know who these are.
Slow Sally: (ambles back into room)
Me: (holds handbag out to Slow Sally) Here you go. I think these are yours.
Slow Sally: Oh, thanks! I’ve been looking for these.
The stupid woman left her phone midcall, stumbled into the toilet with her handbag, and just left it there. God knows what she did after that. Probably wandered around the building wondering where she’d put her handbag. Mr Marketing stormily ushered her away to a conference room for ‘words’ - we all started gossiping, wondering if she was getting fired.
Unfortunately, she walked back into the room with him five minutes later with her usual vague, distant smile. We knew she hadn’t been fired because she was still singing. Slow Sally sings this continuous lyric-less song all through the day. It’s as if she doesn’t know how to hum, she just sings ‘la la la’ all day.
On Sunday there was a police car in the driveway of our block of units. It stayed there all day. The cops were freaking me out because every time I walked past them, they craned their necks to look at me as if I was a guilty suspect in some crime. I assume they were after Wezza downstairs, doing him in for drug possession or something. I would normally have assumed that they’d finally caught Dodgy John (who is surely wanted by the police for numerous crimes), but I’ve been told he moved back in with his Druglord Girlfriend. I honestly think they place drugs before their relationship.
I had another scary sex-with-a-woman dream on Sunday night. For some reason, I will occasionally dream of being with a woman, but what happens in the dreams only confirms how little I know about females. In my last dream, the female’s, er… genitals… were sucking in my… er… bits. Um. Yeah. Like a venus fly trap. It was really scary, and the woman kept going ‘What’s wrong?’ and I was saying things like ‘I’m scared it will get pulled off! I kind of need it, you know! I quite like it! It might come in handy one day!’
Speaking of the cops - I thought I was being trailed by a police car when I drove to the supermarket the other day. I’m not a person who generally speeds on the road, but on the rare occasions I do speed, it seems I always get picked up by the police.
I remember one day when I was at uni, I had 3 police incidents. At the start of the day, I’d parked my car for three hours in a two hour zone while I went to a uni lecture, so I got a parking ticket. I also got pulled over later in the afternoon for speeding.
That night, my druggo flatmate was smoking dope, and I had a little bit as well. Now let me make one thing clear: I don’t condone drugs and driving. It’s a really, really dumb thing to do. But I used to do it. My theory at the time was that dope made me drive slower because I was so paranoid and in awe of all the bright lights (I used to blow my own mind when I came up with theories like ‘Driving at night is so cool, because everything you need to see IS LIT UP!’).
Me and my flatmate decided to do a midnight munchies run. The nearest supermarket was a bit of a drive away, so we drove down to the shops and bought a whole lot of stuff. I was really hungry, and started munching on a bag of Twisties while I was driving. Driving, incidentally, the wrong way down a one way street.
A police car noticed I was driving the wrong way and pulled me over. I was so nervous that he would smell the dope on us. I was even more nervous he would notice I had orange crumbs all over my goatee and a bag of Twisties between my leg, and that my flatmate was trying to control his infectious giggles. I got off with a warning, but three police incidents in one day was a few too many for me.
Scooter bought a bag of Twisties at work yesterday, and offered them around to all the other temps. The UK backpacker temps had never seen them before.
UK temp: (nibbles at Twistie) Oh my god. It’s cheese, it’s cheesy. Oh my god, oh my god. How can this be so orange and be cheese? Oh my god, my god…
I think she was terrified.
In case you’re not familiar with Twisties, they’re these cheese (or chicken) flavoured crisps. Things. It’s difficult to describe the shape of them. They sort of look like those really skinny poos that you really have to strain out.
On my way home on Tuesday, I bought a bag of hot chips at the train station. I then had to balance holding my bag, my bag of chips, my wallet and my train ticket all at once as I was caught in the unstoppable wave of people at the crowded train station. I was managing everything fine, until I put my ticket in the ticket barrier and entered the station, when two of the chips started falling out of the bag. I was determined not to let them fall to the ground, because I thought other chips would follow the rebel chips’ lead.
They started falling onto my arm, and I managed to balance them there while I put my ticket back into my wallet with one hand. Then the oil started burning into my skin. It was difficult not to cry out in agony, but I sure as hell was not going to let this stupid chip win.
Then a chip that had broken in half landed on my hand, on the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. I thought the oil was hot, but the potato was a totally different matter. I remember in ancient times, they used to tip burning oil over the sides of castles to ward off attackers. Well, I reckon they should have followed up the attack by throwing freshly baked potatos at their enemies (pain AND burning!)
My train was early that day. I almost fell off my seat sideways when it pulled into the platform two minutes ahead of schedule. I had never in my whole life witnessed an early train.
I’ve mentioned before my hatred of people whose mobile phone rings on the train. Well, the only thing worse than sitting in front of someone whose mobile phone keeps ringing, is sitting in front of someone who’s obviously just got a new phone, and is going through all the ringing noises to see which one they like best. (Should it be just a normal ring? Or perhaps this rather analogue version of Eiffel 65’s ‘Blue’?)
The person I was sitting behind was a different story. I sat there drooling over how hot I thought the guy was, then I realised I was basing my attractions on the back of the guy’s neck. The back of his neck, the back half of a haircut, and some ears. Is that how I judge good looks nowadays? I always thought I was attracted to the conventially more attractive side of a head.
But it was an awfully muscular neck, you see. Er, anyway…
Have you ever been in a supermarket, then over the loudspeaker ‘Security, security to aisle 3′ is announced - and you’re the only person in aisle 3? I always feel so guilty when that happens. I’m never doing anything wrong - usually I’ve just picked up something to take a better look at it, when the security guard marches up the aisle and I have to try and look innocent. When I’m innocent already. Which makes me look guilty. I usually end up prematurely leaving the aisle, which probably makes me look guiltier still.
The GST tax is still confusing me. Apparently it’s not applicable to fresh food (why not call everything fresh food?), yet I wasn’t charged GST on my Yogo. Yogo is a chocolatey, liquidy, yoghurty, chemically type dessert thing. It’s definitely not natural. Nor fresh. Yet according to the government it is. How is Yogo non-GST?
Nivea sent me a ‘men’s skin care’ pack in the mail yesterday. I certainly don’t recall requesting it, and I’m not sure where they got my address from, but they sent me a little package of four strangely coloured liquids in a box. I’m sure they’re going to lose money going down the Men’s Skin Care trail - men just don’t care about things like this!
I mean, in the package, I got:
* Aftershave balm
* Moisturising liquid
* Double action face wash
* Exfoliating face scrub
See, as far as I’m concerned, all these four liquids are exactly the same thing! I’m not even sure I know what the word balm MEANS! Men just don’t care about skin products.
Adam and I were watching The Big Breakfast before I went to work on Tuesday, which is a cartoons show interjected with segments from the ‘cool’ teenage hosts. (Well, obviously it wasn’t that Big a Breakfast because it’s getting axed). We watched a bit of Sonic the Hedgehog… since when did Sonic play a guitar? They must have modernised him or something. Then we saw an advertisement for Walt Disney’s Snow White On Ice. Why does Disney insist on putting all these shows on ice? Is it because Walt Disney himself is on ice? Anyway, as Adam said, it would be far more impressive if it was Walt Disney On Hot Coals than Walt Disney On Ice.
Jen and I had lunch together on Tuesday, while she smoked her menthol cigerettes (the cigerette equivalent of Tic-Tacs).
Woman I don’t really know that well: (walks past us)
Me: Hey there.
Woman I don’t really know that well: (smiles) Hi.
Jen: Who’s she?
Me: I don’t know. She’s just an employee.
Jen: Why do you say hi to her?
Me: I just see her around, so I say hi.
Jen: Oh, you don’t really know her or anything.
Me: No. She’s just a hey-friend.
Jen: A hey-friend?
Me: The kind of friend you only say ‘hey’ to. No small conversation or anything.
Jen: A hey-friend. Is that even an actual category of friend?
Me: How am I supposed to know? I don’t even have hardly any friends. They’re just friends to me.
When we arrived back from lunch, we found Parappa the Rapper asleep on his desk. He’s quite sneaky at doing this, because he sleeps in a corner, and he’s also a big fella. He sort of just rolls forward, and you can’t tell if he’s asleep or not because his back is so big. You can’t be sure until he starts snoring.
We didn’t have much work to do in the afternoon, so Jen told me stories.
She told me of the time her girlfriend’s brother went to a farm to try and sell a farmer some machinery. Her brother was a salesman in farm machinery and had just demonstrated a whole load of machinery on-site at this old man’s farm. The man was very impressed, and decided to invite the sales guy in for some breakfast.
The sales man expected a hearty country breakfast, so he was a little confused when the farmer placed an un-buttered piece of toast in front of him, then put a bit of lettuce on the top. Apparently, that was what they ate for breakfast, and it was known as ‘Super Power Toast’ because it had all you needed to get through the day.
Then Jen told me the story of when she visited Tokyo Disneyland with her girlfriend. It was a really busy day, and all the lines for the good rides were really long, so they decided to go and check out the attractions that didn’t have long lines. They ended up in some cinema that told the history of Japan, and you had to wear headsets to hear the sound. The trouble was, Jen’s girlfriend’s headset wasn’t working. She looked around for some controls, but it was too dark to see anything at all. She noticed a red light behind her, so she tried pressing it, thinking it was maybe a button. No joy - there was still no sound. Again she turned around and tried to adjust the knob where the red light was - still nothing to hear.
After the feature finished and the lights turned up, she looked behind her. She realised in horror that her ‘red light’ was in actual fact the cinema screen reflecting off the man behind her’s glasses, and that she had been turning around and tapping on his glasses lenses for most of the movie.
After telling me all these stories, Jen wanted a story of my own, so I told her the story of the Mystery Banging Noise Woman.
I know this guy, and I used to sleep over at his house some nights. Some mornings when I woke up I could hear this strange noise… it was sort of a buzzing noise, then it sounded like something exploding. I could never figure out what it was. All the time, this ‘bzzzzzBANG!’ sound I just couldn’t put my finger on.
I later learnt that it was their female flatmate using her vibrator. Apparently the batteries kept running out at just the wrong moment, and in her frustration she would throw the vibrator at the wall.
I was looking at the website for my new favourite search engine Google, and saw some pictures of their head office. They’ve actually got a roller hockey ring at their offices, which I thought was pretty cool - but as long as it’s not a compulsory ‘team character building’ activity. I would never, ever wokr somewhere with forced sport activities. I know of a lot of companies where the employees are forced into half-hearted soccer teams and the like.
I changed high schools when I was in year 11, and myself and my parents were having interviews with a few schools in the area to see which one I liked best. There was one school I went to that I quite liked the look of, until I found out that there was compulsory sport activity - after school hours, god forbid! - every afternoon. I decided straight away that forced sport = not the school for me.
It’s like Fun Runs. Nobody ever wants to do them, be it a school or corporate Fun Run. They’re always forced participation, and they’re not fun at all. The only person who seems to have fun at Fun Runs is the organiser of the event, who is continuously telling you that you’ll get a free pair of headphones (or substitute crap prize) if you can just raise $500 worth of sponsorship.
Jen and I were picking on each other today.
Jen: (flicks rubber band at me)
Me: Stop it!
Jen: (pokes me)
Me: Stop annoying me, you stupid dildo!
Jen: What? (obviously hadn’t heard ‘dildo’ as an insult before)
Me: I said you’re a stupid dildo.
Jen: (loudly) Oh, but I LOOOOOOVE dildos! And one day you will too!
Me: !?!
If Scooter hasn’t figured out that Jen is gay by now, he’s very slow. I’m worried that he thinks I am as well - I’m not quite ready for him to know that fact about me yet.
I noticed Scooter has a really unusual way of writing. He only writes in upper case, which is fine, but whenever he writes the letter D it’s twice as big as any of the other letters. I can’t figure out what significance this could have. He’s also having to start writing in lower case again - something he hasn’t done for some time, apparently. This is because he needs to write down email addresses in lower case. It’s actually quite funny - he has sensible writing in capitals (albiet with big D’s) and then lower case writing like a kid from kindergarten.
The DJ Accountant is still calling me stupid names. He’s taken to calling me cutesy names lately.
Jen: He’s annoying the hell out of me.
Me: Me too. Let’s shoot him.
Jen: You know, with all those cutesy names he calls you, maybe he’s gay.
Me: It wouldn’t surprise me.
Jen: Actually, no. I don’t want him to be gay. I don’t want someone like that in my family.
I think the Accountant DJ is still fighting with his girlfriend. I can tell when he is, because instead of swearing all the time, he just exhales like a truck exhaust, as if this makes everything better. I bet he learnt that from Relaxation for Dummies or something.
He also still continues to pick on my hair. He makes these upward motions, running his hands through his hair, as if he’s mimicking me spiking up my hair in the morning. I’ve deliberately started wearing it flat lately.
Me: He’s still doing those hand signals.
Jen: What hand signals?
Me: Where he pretends to be me, spiking up my hair.
Jen: But your hair is all flat today.
Me: I know. But still he continues.
Jen: Your hair actually looks like Julius Caesar.
Me: What, Julius Caesar had spiky hair? I don’t think he did.
Jen: No, he had flat hair.
Me: Oh.
Jen: You could pass for Julius Caesar, you know.
Me: Wasn’t Julius Caesar really fat?
Jen: I don’t know. He might have been.
Me: You’re saying I’m fat aren’t you?
Jen: No I’m not. I’m just saying you have hair like him.
Me: You’re not thinking of that guy from Gladiator, are you?
Jen: No. I don’t think so.
Me: Because that wasn’t Julius Caesar. That was someone else.
Jen: He had flat hair too, didn’t he? You could pass for him too. Was he fat?
Me: I don’t really care. I don’t want to be a Roman emperor anymore.
As I mentioned in my last journal entry, I’m suspecting the person who fills up our drink machine at work is dead. The drink machine has run out of every soft drink except Deep Spring flavoured mineral water.
Me: Goddamit, now I’m reduced to drinking Deep Spring.
Scooter: Deep Spring isn’t all that bad.
Me: But it doesn’t have caffeine in it.
Slow Sally: (pipes up) Wasn’t that a porno?
Scooter: (in visual disbelief) WHAT?!
Me: ‘Caffeine’?
Slow Sally: No, ‘Deep Spring’.
Me: Er… no.
Scooter: Are you thinking of ‘Deep Throat’?
Slow Sally: (shrieks) THAT’S IT!