At first, when I was clearing the junk from on top of the fridge, it looked like marshmallow. Mmm, I thought. Marshmallow. However I did think it was a trifle strange that it was sitting in a coffee mug.

I grabbed the mug to take a closer look, and peered into it. After prodding the contents of the mug, I suddenly realised four things:

1. There was no marshmallow in the mug.
2. There was a giant mound of bacteria in the mug.
3. The fungus smelt so foul and looked so foul I very near barfed.
4. Sweden deserved everything they got in the last Eurovision Song Contest. (The realisation of this may or may not have been related to the fungus discovery).

To prevent incidents like this occuring again, Adam and I have implemented a Wash-Dishes-Every-Night Initiative. As it’s his turn to wash the dishes, Adam has embraced the initiative by making an exception to the rule and leaving everything in the sink for a week.

*****

Adam had declared he wanted steak and vegies for dinner, so I ventured into the local butcher store earlier.

For me, purchasing meat can be as confronting an experience as purchasing coffee. Coffee used to be easy to purchase, before everything was stupid-cchino-ised and gourmet coffee beans came into being. Now it confuses the hell out of me so much I usually pretend I’m not thirsty and order cake, or sometimes order hot chocolate. Hot chocolate never fails to make me want to curl into a ball and sleep.

I decided I would just ask for ’steak’. ‘Steak’ seemed fairly generic. Surely the world of steak couldn’t be as complicated as the exotic, musky, dangerous world of coffee?

‘What would you like?’ the butcher shouted at me from the back of the store, as if I was rudely interrupting a very effecient day’s work of pulling apart bits of horses.

‘STEAK,’ I replied, a little too confidently.

‘What kind of steak?’ the feared response flew back at me.

Shit. What kind of steak? How can there even be different kinds of steak? Fortunately, the butcher saw my pain and obviously recognised a steak novice when he saw one.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ he suggested.

Without a second’s thought, I replied ‘I’m going to cook it’.

He cocked his head at me, and I realised what a stupid answer that actually was. What else would I have done with it? Attempted to stick it into my CD player? Used the steak as a quill and the dripping meaty cow-blood as ink? Framed it as a post-modern piece of art?

Eventually, the steak confusion was cleared up.

As I walked outside, I noticed a woman staring into the window at the meat on display. I believe this is actually the first time I have spotted someone taking an interest in the meat display of a butcher store’s window. When you think about it, the whole meat-in-the-window display seems quite strange. The woman turned her nose up at the collective late animals and walked down the street in a way only a vegetarian could walk.

Vegetarians confuse me. Meat’s fantastic. There’s nothing wrong with killing animals and gobbling them up, as long as they’re not looking at me. Oh, and as long as they’re not fish too - that helps. Fish are disgusting, because they smell like fish.

But meat - everyone loves meat. People have made a living from meat. Some people find certain cuts of meat sexually arousing. The art world is always creating odes to meat. Prince even once recorded a very rare album which was one big ode to meat - ‘Rave Un2 The Meat Fantastic’. Go look for it on Amazon.com some time.

I remember as a kid, I always used to get taken on my mum’s weekly shopping trips with my sister. She always visited the butcher shop last, and it was the butcher shop we feared the most. A giant emporium lit up in pink lights with suspicious goings-on behind the counter, sawdust on the floor, and odours akin to things we’d only smelt in the toilet? We weren’t quite sure what to make of the whole experience.

When most parents went shopping with their kids, they usually bought them a Freddo Frog chocolate to shut them up. The lucky kids got a giant snake lolly if they were lucky, or perhaps some sherbert. But not my mother, oh no.

Where most children were given Freddo Frogs on their weekly shopping trip, my sisters and I had a revolting meat-type substance known as strasberg forced down our throats whenever we visited the butcher. For a short period of time I went on strike and refused to partake in the strasberg sillyness, but I was quickly slapped around the head and told to eat the meat and shut up.

And people wonder why I turned out gay.

*****

I also had a package from my parents to pick up from the post office, so I collected that on my way back home. It was incredibly heavy and it was quite difficult balancing that while holding an umbrella at the same time, as well as a bag from the butcher (which burst open halfway home).

In fact, my arms were spasming with cramps by the time I got home. I rubbed some Dencorub on them, and my arms went from experiencing spasms to experiencing orgasms.

Opening the package, I decided that it had better be worth big arm cramps. It was: a giant box of books I’d asked my parents to send me from home. Also, a new white shirt, another of those skinny eighties-style ties that my mum seems to delight in buying for me from second-hand clothes stores, and also a pair of blue speedos I swear I never remember owning. The fact that she was going through my drawers looking for things like old blue speedos is suspicious enough, let alone the issue of the skinny ties.

*****

My parents emailed me this week to let me know that my Right Wing Aunt is in trouble with the police. God knows what for. Nobody in our family talks that to the Right Wing Aunt, usually because we can’t get too close to her property without being shot at by a gun.

It should come as no surprise that the Right Wing Aunt is a librarian by profession. All librarians I’ve met have eccentric (read: psychotic) double lives. The Right Wing Aunt is a mousy librarian by day, but at night she’s to be found nowhere but the pub. Or in the clink - this happens occasionally, for varying petty crimes.

We try to ignore the Right Wing Aunt but it’s a little difficult. She’s become even more temperamental over the past few years, but I believe this can be attributed to the influx of computers in libraries. I’m positive - despite all her crime cred - that the Right Wing Aunt is scared of anything in the library that can’t either be stamped with a due date, charged an overdue fee for, or referenced with a Dewey number.

The plain fact is, computers are a very big threat to the once-secure domain of the librarian. They were quite happy to stare sternly at you over their half-moon glasses and tut-tut at you when you returned some crappy Steven King novel a week late. To them, the twenty cents late fee means a lot more the face value.

The modern librarian’s biggest worry is the catalogue. Specifically, the computer catalogue. Don’t believe any librarian when they tell you that they’ve disposed of the card catalogue. It’s still there, usually in a back room or a basement. Even when you ask them where a certain book is located, the computer they’re using is just a dummy computer. Ever noticed how you can’t see below their desk? It’s because they’re furiously flipping through their own little miniturised card catalogue.

The librarians have gone to pains to ensure that you have just as much trouble using their computers as they do. All computer catalogues feature a monotone green screen by default. The enter key is always sticky. Many librarians have also undertaken courses on how to ensure the Delete key never works (usually at the same educational institution that instructed them on how to make it appear you have pseudo-Internet knowledge).

Start a revolution. Reclaim the libraries. Thrust a PDA in your local librarian’s face and watch them squirm.

*****

Inventions That Scream Of Modern Convenience But Just Shouldn’t Be

1: Shorts With Built In Underpants. Adam’s got a pair of these - I tried them on once but I just felt dirty and naughty. The underpants component of the shorts is made from a suspicious fishnet-type material. I wonder if Adam’s not telling me something.

2: Blow Up Dolls For Children. A woman who I work with has declared she wants to patent a sex doll with detachable sex-bits. This way, she explained, once you’d finished porking the plastic; you could pull said breasts/dildo/’raining vagina’ from the doll and let the kids play with it.

*****

I was asked for directions by a Brisbane tourist in the city this week. Apparently he was on a day trip, so he didn’t have much time to spare. He even told me to hurry up when he was explaining things.

I’ve been thinking of visiting Brisbane soon, actually. Perhaps a day trip could be the way to go. It seems like quite a good idea - you don’t have to go through all the bother, commitment and arguments of a holiday. The best thing about such a short trip is that it’s all over and done with before you know it, and then you can come home and lie about how good it was.

*****

Jeb Official Bad Things: Moments Of Universal Whinge

I’ve noticed a phenomenon which tends to rear itself in gloomy weather, such as what Sydney experienced this week. A large segment of the population tends to complain about everything that moves, especially when in large groups with other complainers.

These phenomenons I have dubbed Moments Of Universal Whinge. Examples I have witnessed this week:

* When queing up at the train station earlier this week, three consecutive people elected to pay by credit card rather than cash. This caused the line to be substantially held up while cards were accepted, signed for and declined. A lot of people missed their train, and a Moment Of Universal Whinge ensued.
* My work initiated a special offer which allowed people to receive a free t-shirt if they did certain things. There was a great deal of organising and teamwork to get the promotion going. When we saw the communication that had been sent out to people, we realised there was a bad spelling error: in giant letters, the offer of a free ‘T-SHIT’ screamed out to people. Unfortunately, we have no wearable excrement to send out to anyone. A Moment Of Universal Whinge ensued.
* I was supposed to compile a big report last week for a high-up-management woman. She asked me for it on Friday morning and I quickly realised I’d forgotten all about it. Fudging my way through it, I handed her last week’s report and hoped she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t, but everyone else in the meeting she brought it to did. The meeting attendees weren’t happy, and I’m told A Moment Of Universal Whinge ensued.
* It was Vanessa Undresser’s birthday this week but nobody’s quite sure how old she is. It was really bugging us because it’s quite hard to guess how old she’d be. When we all asked her her age, she claimed she was ‘twenty-swarg’. Note that she said ’swarg’ really quietly and under her breath. She wouldn’t repeat what she said, so I’m assuming that twenty-swarg is a generic twenties age - it could really sound like anything. Everyone was frustrated that she wouldn’t elaborate on how old twenty-swarg actually was, and A Moment Of Universal Whinge ensued.

*****

The woman who sits behind me at work often wears strange items of clothes to work, but not even I was ready for the wig she was wearing on Thursday. A giant blonde fluffy thing sitting on top of her head took me a little aback, but then Kazza walked in the door completely red.

‘Is that sunburn?’ I asked, half hoping it was, half hoping it wasn’t.

‘Yes,’ she snapped.

I couldn’t help wondering. ‘How the hell do you get sunburnt in weather like this?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ she stated.

‘No, really,’ I said. ‘I really do want to know.’

‘No, TRUST me,’ she hissed, baring her teeth. ‘You REALLY REALLY don’t want to know.’

Fine, I said. To be honest, I didn’t really want to know. It could only have been through perverted reasons that someone could get so sunburnt during such a rainy, gloomy period of weather.

*****

Later that morning, Kazza asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with her. Sure, I said. The only problem was that she didn’t have an umbrella of her own, but I said I’d share mine with her.

So we walked outside, me groaning and moaning as I struggled to hold up the umbrella - I was still experiencing spasm-y cramps from the package earlier that week. As we walked along the pavement, I noticed Kazza was making quiet little yelping noises whenever falling rain happened to collide with her blistering red skin.

Moaning Man and Yipping Woman: There could not be a more perfect match.

*****

After we returned from lunch, I spotted Big Mo lurking around the entrance to my work. ‘Cigarettes,’ he hissed at us. ‘Cigarettes.’

Kazza turned to me with her I’m-new-here-and-I’m-a-bit-of-a-ditz face (I’ve been seeing quite a lot of that lately). ‘Big Mo doesn’t buy his own cigarettes,’ I explained. ‘He bums them from everyone else.’

‘Yes,’ Big Mo roared. ‘Cigarettes!’

‘I haven’t got any on me,’ Kazza panicked, taking everything a little too literally.

‘You’d be best to carry some with you at all times,’ I advised. ‘I mean, I don’t even smoke, but I’m on a pack a week because of Big Mo.’

‘Really?’ she innocently asked. I looked around for a wall to bang my head against. In fact, it was only that morning I’d been joking that McCraig came into work one day off his head on acid, and she believed that too. Even when I tried to convince her I was joking she wasn’t so sure.

In fact, this whole thing of her not understanding when I’m joking is becoming a little painful. I’ve decided I won’t even bother explaining anymore and just let her figure things out for herself.

However, this is becoming almost agony to watch. Example: Kazza is now in charge of photocopying a daily report for some of our staff. All she needs to do is get the report from the fax machine when she arrives in the morning, chuck it in the photocopier and make 50 copies. Then she can walk away, and everyone who needs the report in the morning can walk past the photocopier and grab a copy.

I was explaining to Kazza how to do this when she first started working with us. ‘Just put it in the paper feeder like this,’ I said, placing the pile of pages on top of the machine, so it was loading into the automatic paper feeder. ‘Then you can just walk away.’

‘Why are you putting the paper in the copier face up?’ she demanded.

‘It’s a paper feeder,’ I explained. ‘This is the way you copy it.’

‘Face up?’ she repeated. Thus began a witty interchange about which way up the paper was supposed to be loaded:

Kazza: Face up?
Me: Face up.
Kazza: Face up?
Me: Face up.
Kazza: Face up?
Me: Face up.
Kazza: Ah. You’re joking! Ha ha ha.

Then she began photocopying everything face down. The unbelievable thing is that she’s still photocopying 50 reports face down every day, and I haven’t the heart to say anything.

*****

‘What would you like to eat this morning?’ Robb Flynn Jnr asked me as I entered the cafeteria. I knew he was up to something before I’d even walked in there - probably planning to do something to my favourite morning tea purchase, a ham and cheese toastie. I decided to throw him off track by buying something different.

‘Jam muffin, thanks,’ I declared. Ha! Take that.

‘Oh really?’ he smirked. ‘Jam?’ I sensed he was simply buying time and speedily concocting a new way to piss me off.

‘Yes,’ I declared. ‘Jam. Now.’

‘We’re all out of jam,’ he lied.

I banged my fist down on the counter. ‘No you haven’t!’ I complained.

‘Yes we have. BUT - you can have MARMALADE!’ he exclaimed, as if marmalade was a new cure for cancer and a remarkably great sex aid to boot.

‘What? WHAT? You’re reeling us in with jam, and then try to give us the hard-sell on marmalade?’ I spat, disgusted.

‘Sorry,’ Robb Jnr shrugged, and walked around to my side of the counter to clean it with a rag. At this moment, Kazza walked into the cafeteria, and Robb brightened immediately. It’s now no secret that these two are secretly harbouring feelings for each other, but I’m doing my best to ruin things between them (primarily to get even with Robb).

As soon as Kazza walked over to us, I felt my stomach rumbling and quickly developed a sneaky plan. Lifting my leg slightly, I tried as hard as I could to fart in Robb’s general direction, and hope that Kazza would think it was Robb. I would even look at Robb with a disgusted face. A silent, weak fart was all I could manage, and by that stage Robb had skipped over to a table to sit down with Kazza.

Not to be outdone, I quickly stalked him and sat down at the table too, and a strange noise emmitted from underneath me as I sat down. Incredibly, Robb asked me ‘Did you just fart?’

‘No,’ I replied quickly. I stood up and had a look at the chair. ‘I think I just sat in an orange,’ I said.

‘Not an orange,’ Robb advised, with the air of someone who works in hospitality. ‘Definitely mandarin.’

‘Oh man,’ I complained. ‘I hate mandarins.’

‘Well, you’d better go and get that all cleaned off then, hadn’t you?’ Robb dismissed, with a nod of his head towards the toilets.

He won that round, but I will reign supreme in the end.

*****

This week I noticed Wezza poke his head out the door of his unit. His mousey eyes darted back and forth to make sure nobody was around. Entranced, I stayed at the top landing of the stairs, staring down to see what was going to happen next. He was obviously up to something supsicious.

The next thing I saw was very amusing indeed: Wezza the hard-core druggo scuttled out his door wearing his usual leather jacket, but sprung headlong into the rain with a PINK umbrella.

*****

I remember in my first year of primary school, approximately age five, I decided that if I wore a leather jacket to school, the girls would love me and would chase after me during lunch time.

There was the small problem that I didn’t have a leather jacket, but I did have a silver raincoat. Admittedly, it was a grey coat, not silver; but at the time I thought silver sounded far sexier than grey.

To my complete surprise, no girls ran after me at all. The only person who did run after me was a very concerned teacher, worried that I’d get heat exhaustion because I was walking around in a raincoat during steaming mid-summer weather. It sure was a good idea for a five year old, though.

*****

The only other person I can remember who used to wear raincoats all the time was Sonny. Sonny worked at the college I worked at last year, and was the most egotistical gay man I’ve ever met. Every day he’d pluck hairs from his legs and all other sorts of places, tell us all about how he was making his skin ’shiny’, and frequently distributed questionaires on what we thought of his new outfit. (When I first started that job, I thought the questionaires were a joke, so I wrote ‘Sonny is obviously the master of accessorisation’ on it. He decided I wasn’t so bad after all when he saw I’d written that).

Sonny used to go to the solarium every day, and got to know one of the students who attended the college I worked at. Apparently this student worked at the solarium, and Sonny got free solarium sessions every now and then. I was talking to the student one day, and he offered to give me a free session. I was a little apprehensive, but in the end the gay gene took over and I was drawn in.

As I was lying in the solarium bed, I imagined I’d jump out and see a bronzed, muscluar hunk in the mirror. All I saw when everything was over was a slightly pinkish version of the man I’d been looking at ten minutes earlier. Still, I was offered a few more free sessions and got a little bit of a tan happening. Once they started making me pay for the sessions, I stopped going. That, and the whole cancer thing made me worry a little too.

Still, at least I can blame being gay for using a solarium last year. The ‘it’s okay because I’m gay’ excuse comes in real handy at times. For example:

* If I’m wearing suspicious underwear (nothing feminine, mind you; just anything that differs from a three-year-old pair of crusty jocks from K-Mart), I can simply say ‘But I’m gay’ and it all makes sense.
* I’ve got suspiciously effecient administrational skills - ‘because I’m gay’.
* I’ve got no hair on my chest - not by choice. I push and push but can’t sprout anything. My excuse? ‘I’m gay.’
* I can get away with really bad farts because I’m gay. Eg:

Me: (dirty fart)
Bystander: That’s disgusting!
Me: Hey, did I ever tell you I was gay?
Bystander: What? You’re GAY?? (Note that the fart is now completely forgotten about)

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