I still don’t bloody know if I’ve got my job or not yet. I was promised by the job agency that they would let me know last week, and ‘if they hadn’t called by end of Friday, ring us back’. I rang on Friday afternoon only to be told that the guy handling my application had left for the weekend. Thus began a weekend of more wondering. I spoke to the agency again today, only to be told that they still haven’t come to a conclusion - but the reason for this is because they’re pushing to get me a higher wage. At least that’s good, I guess, but I don’t want the agency to fuck up the application on my behalf. The pay is less than what I was asking for, but I was asking for ridiculous amounts which I wouldn’t have normally gotten anyway. Besides, as it eventually becomes a sales position, I’ll be making a lot on commission anyway.

The guy at the job agency that I’m dealing with is a Small Talker. He can tell you the facts, but he can’t fill in the awkward silences. I’m okay if I’m conversing with a Regular Talker - I can bounce off the other person and hold a reasonable conversation. However, stick me in a room with a Small Talker and it’s the death of the full stop.

Small Talker job agency man: So… uh… yes, they… we… um…
Me: The … uh, the… you’re waiting?.. um..
Small Talker job agency man: Yes! Yes! (grasps onto opportunity to continue conversation) We’re waiting, waiting… um… they haven’t decided.. the, ah…
Me: Oh, that’s.. yeah… well, it’s okay, I’m… it’s just, uh…
Small Talker job agency man: (looks at table, pretends to shuffle papers - which is rather mean, leaving me to do all the talking)

So after all this, I’m still waiting. I sure hope I get the job - more than ever now, because I’ve developed a cold and don’t want to attend interviews with my blocked nose.

Me: I have a lot of cuss’mer serrv’s.
Recruiter: What? You’re good at cussing?

*****

In my opinion Tex Perkins is one of the sexiest men around (with goatee, thanks). His primary job is Husky Sexy Singer, but he does dabble with acting as well.

Poking around the Internet Movie Database recently (did you know there was a Celebrity Family edition of Double Dare with an apperance by Weird Al Yankovic?… this site is a bounty of knowledge), I decided to look up Tex Perkins and see what films he’d been in.

After typing in ‘Tex Perkins’, I was shocked. What did I see? “Gregory Perkins, sometimes credited as Tex Perkins”.

I was instantly deflated. I think half the reason Tex is sexy is because of his name. And even worse, he’s starting to actively avoid using Tex - this was in last week’s edition of In Music & Media:

“Rumours are that Tex Perkins might adopt his “real” name Greg for his solo album, after he introduced himself with that name when he showcased the new (and damn good) “Dark Horses” album and introduced himself as Greg.”

No, Tex, no! You’re Tex, not GREG!

(deletes Texburger story after deciding it’s too rude to put here - let’s just say it involves a long-running joke about the mayonnaise in McDonalds’ McChicken burgers)

*****

It’s easy to see why I ended up the way I did if you know what my mum is like. She’s got a habit of keeping video tapes of any TV program featuring people hurting themselves, which she finds incredibly funny. Take this email she sent me last week:

I’ve just been watching our video of the footy grand final again. It’s so funny. They had an item on the news about it, and they showed all the fans flooding into the MCG. There was one man so eager to get in, he was sprinting, and then he falls flat on his face. It’s hilarious!!! You’ll love it, it’s so funny… almost as good as my Gladiators video.

Ah, the fabled Gladiators video. My mum was an enormous fan of Gladiators when it used to be on TV, but only because of the laugh factor she seemed to get from it. There was one particular episode of the show, where a contestant navigating the rolling logs on the obstacle course trips, and smacks his face rather painfully on the padded mat. It’s a wonder the video hasn’t been worn through, the amount of times my mum watches that. When she found out the girl who ran past our place with the Olympic Torch almost fell over, the first thing she asked me was if I got a picture of it.

However, sometimes I don’t question if karma exists. It was last December, I recall, that my parents took our baby cousin to a local playground in Torquay for an afternoon out. My mum took it upon herself to go on the slide with the kid. The little boy traversed the length of the slide without a problem, but it was my mother who came flailing off the end of the slide, got her foot caught in a hole in the ground, and drove her body into the ground in a decidedly slapstick manner. We’re not allowed to mention that incident, because she gets a bit touchy.

*****

I learnt a new Life Lesson today: wearing clothes straight of the clothes drier isn’t always necessarily comfortable. Sure, it can be really nice pulling on a warm tshirt straight from the clothes drier, but be careful when wearing freshly dried jeans. I pulled on a pair today straight from the drier (without letting it go through it’s cooling phase), and burnt my hand on the zipper. At least it was my hand and not something decidedly more vital.

*****

Usually Adam and I use a body wash liquid in the shower, but we ran out of this a week ago. Now I’m reduced to using soap. Call me a whinger, but a body wash is far superior to soap - in terms of laziness, anyway. I have a shower when I wake up, and usually I don’t really know what’s going on at that time of the morning. It’s nice and easy to just squirt the body wash all over yourself, rather than use soap. Soap is complicated. Soap involves rubbing yourself vigorously. It’s almost exercise compared to body wash. Worst of all, to use soap you have to work up a lather. Did you catch the key word there? WORK?

*****

As I walked past a woman sitting at a nearby bus stop today, a piece of paper blew out of a folder she was examining. I decided the decent thing to do was to pick it up for her - after all, it had blown just ahead of myself.

As I bent down to pick it up, it blew further down the footpath. I trotted off to retrieve it again, and once more it was pulled away by a gust of wind. I paused to decide what to do.

The best course of action seemed to be running in a fashion which involved staying half bent over, so I could reach out and grab the paper before it was whisked away from me again. Still, the paper kept getting blown further and further away.

I looked back at the woman, standing up at the distant bus stop, becoming a little alarmed that perhaps I was papernapping her article. It was almost not worth it at this point - I could just pretend to continue chasing the paper around the corner of the street and disappear. What was the conventional point of giving up chasing a bit of paper for someone? It must have appeared almost comical to anyone watching - it was if someone had it on a bit of wire and pulled it further and further away from me each time I tried to grab it. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Steven Jacobs popped out from behind a building with a microphone, insanely joyful over the fact that ‘Just Kidding’ had been brought back on air by Channel 9.

*****

Adam thinks it’s ridiculous that 50% of the books I own, I haven’t read.

Adam: You don’t even read them.
Me: But I WILL.
Adam: That’s such crap.
Me: See, books are different from music or whatever. When you see a book somewhere, you may not see that book again, so you have to buy it.
Adam: You’re an idiot.
Me: You just don’t understand, do you? You should try reading one of my books some time.
Adam: Me? Read your books? Not likely.
Me: Why is that? I bet you don’t even know the last time you read a work of fiction.
Adam: Actually, I have a reason for not reading fiction.
Me: Oh?
Adam: Fiction is just stuff that isn’t true. Lies, GODDAMN LIES! You’re filling your head with LIES!
Me: So what’s your opinion on libraries then? House of Untruths?
Adam: No, libraries are good.
Me: What?!
Adam: I just avoid the fiction - or lies - area.
Me: You hardly read at all anyway. You’d never be seen in a library.
Adam: I do so read. I read a lot.
Me: Well, I’ve seen better.
Adam: I read shitloads of stuff! (begins listing all the magazines and newspapers he reads)
Me: Oh… okay. So maybe I”ve seen worse as well.
Adam: Hah!
Me: But your magazines are designer things, they’re just full of pictures! That’s not reading at all!
Adam: Yes it is!
Me: No, I take it all back. I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse, but I’ve also seen Echuca.

*****

I used to wonder about what kind of person would create a porno site. I mean, not just a little collection of smutty pictures on their homepage, but a fullyblown site that requires paid membership.

In late ‘98, I was at a mate’s place, and he was driving over to his mate’s to borrow his trailer. The guy was a web designer apparently, but also was building his own site. We were both kinda interested to see what he’d done.

When we both arrived, we were told eagerly that his net-baby, his project, his site that he had been working on for weeks now, was privatevoyeur.com or something along those lines. He took great delight in describing to us exactly how they’d got a model to walk in a trenchcoat down the median strip of one of Melbourne’s biggest freeways, so they could take nudey photos of her in the middle of traffic; and how they’d taken ‘fake’ spy camera shots at Crown Casino up women’s dresses and things. He expected us to be overjoyed when he gave us both passwords for the site, but seeing as we were both gay (and equally repulsed at looking at any porn created by this fat blob sitting in front of us), we weren’t as excited as he expected us to be. He continued to tell us of his business plans:

Porno webmaster: I’m going to branch out into strip clubs soon. That’s where the money is.
Me: I see.
Porno webmaster: A lot of people fail with their clubs, because they don’t advertise.
Me: Um… I see.
Porno webmaster: It’s like sex. You just need to advertise and build up expectations, then when they’re finally in there, it’s brilliant. Better than they expected.
Me: Hang on. Hang on.
Porno webmaster: What?
Me: You can’t use ‘it’s like sex’ as a euphemism.
Porno webmaster: Why not?
Me: For one, EVERYTHING is like sex. It’s too easy to use as an example.
Porno webmaster: Everything isn’t like sex. (I tried to disguise my surprise at this point - he didn’t think life revolved around sex??)
Me: Yes, everything IS like sex. And also, you can’t say it’s like sex, because it IS sex.
Porno webmaster: Exactly. No hang on, no it’s not.
Me: It is so sex.
Porno webmaster: There’s no penetration.
Me: Oh, it’s the sex INDUSTRY then. I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced.
Porno webmaster: This is tasteful adult entertainment.
Me: And it’s like sex?
Porno webmaster: It’s like sex. But it’s not, you see.
Me: (praying in advance for the people who he will eventually hire)

The friend who I went to the Porno Webmaster’s house with, he lived with a cool woman. The first time I went over to his house, she sat down next to me and went through a gay porno catalogue with me. This threw me at first - I’d never even seen such a thing - but some of the plot lines were truly hilarious. A contest to find the dodgiest plot was initiated.

I know porno films aren’t reknowned for their ability to weave a memorable, lasting storyline, but I found one that topped the lot. (I swear I’m not making this up). Are you ready?

‘A dead rock star comes back to life in ghost form on Christmas day, to have sex with all his devoted fans one last time.’

Now come on! Ghost sex? Since when did Industrial Light & Magic get in on the porno scene? And why Christmas? That’s just bizarrely random!

*****

Okay. One more porno anecdote and then I’m done.

My old druggo flatmate used to have a truly screwed up friend. He used to try and freak people out when they visited him - usually if they hadn’t met him before.

If someone was visiting - say, a mate of a mate - we would all know the procedure. It was very difficult for us all to keep a straight face as the guy inserted a video into his VCR, and pressed play. We would all sit there and act as if it was perfectly normal, something we always did when we were relaxing.

We saw a lot of reactions once this happened. Once a girl started crying, one guy stormed out of the house and never came back, another person was strangely entranced. But that’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re a sicko who puts a urine fetish porno movie on to freak people out…

*****

Optus representative: Hello, how can I help you?
Me: Hi. I was just wondering what other mobile phone plans are available to me.
Optus representative: You’re just seeing what the best plan would be for you?
Me: Yep.
Optus representative: Okay. Well, we can actually check your call patterns and determine what plan would be best for you.
Me: Oh, that sounds good.
Optus representative: I can switch you now to the best plan, would you like that?
Me: Sure, go ahead.
Optus representative: Okay. I’ll just get the computer to analyse your calling patterns.
Me: Okay.
Optus representative: (long pause) Um… I might just put you on hold.
Me: Um.. sure.
(five minutes of bad opera later…)
Optus representative: Sir?
Me: Yes?
Optus representative: Your calling patterns are quite unusual.
Me: I guess I spend… different amounts each month.
Optus representative: I’ll say. You go from almost nothing to quite a lot from month to month.
Me: I see. So what plan is best?
Optus representative: Well… that’s the thing. The computer can’t tell me what’s best for you, because your calling patterns are so strange.
Me: Oh… I see. Strange. I’m strange.
Optus representative: Well, you’re what I’d call a problem customer.
Me: A problem customer?
Optus representative: Yeah. Problem customer.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 11th, 2000 at 1:47 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.