Today’s entry is brought to you by:

Finally, we’ve figured out how to beat Coke: by adding alcohol to our drinks!

*****

When our group at work goes outside for a cigarette break, I usually trundle along behind them. They’re not rude enough to exclude me from the cigarette crew, but everyone knows I don’t fit in because I don’t smoke. While we’re inside the building I’m part of the team, but when the Winfield Blues are out - well, consider me as alien as a menthol cigger in a bogan’s mouth.

It has become apparent, however, that there is a new force emerging around the smokey entrance to my work. A certain group of executive show-offs are beginning to smoke cigars outside in a little alcove all of their own. The whole procedure is very masturbatory and self-congratulating, and they’re not really impressing anyone at all.

One of my mates at work has been inadvertedly drawn into the cigar smoking group against his will - his boss invited him out for a cigar and he couldn’t really refuse. Since then he has been slipping further and further into the clutches of the world of cigars.

Last week, he returned from a work lunch in which much alcohol was apparently consumed. He slumped in his chair upon arriving back at the office, and I asked him if he was okay.

‘Off my chest! Off my chest!’ he tipsily muttered.

‘What’s on your chest?’ I asked.

‘Stop standing on my chest!’ he snapped. The guy sitting next to him explained that he’d smoked so many cigars at lunch, this was what it felt like.

*****

The devil can be blamed for indulgences in alcohol and tobacco (amongst other vices… except lust - I freely take blame for that); but he can’t be blamed for stupid fashion statements.

I saw a guy on my lunch break last week with ‘666′ tattooed on the side of his shaved head. I don’t see this as a religious thing, but as nothing more than a call to action for the same fashion police who locked Jason Donvan away when he was poncing about in those pastel fur coats in London, circa early 90’s. (The fashion police later learnt they could leave him alone - he’d eventually fall over and roll into a gutter. Unfortunately, this soon became fashionable also. See: River Phoenix).

So tattooing 666 on your head may be a dumb thing to do, but perhaps it has its advantages. At least you’d never forget your PIN number:

Satanic thug: (typing numbers into ATM, simulatenously trying to see his reflection in a nearby window) Nine… nine… doh!

*****

Last week I moved into an entirely different area of my work’s building. I was moving all the crap on my desk, and decided to take everything in one go. This proved to be a bad move when thigns began slipping and sliding everywhere. Eventually there was nothing I could do to stop a stapler lazily sliding from the top of my pile into a nearby large garbage bin.

Carefully balancing my pile of stationary and computer components against the side of the bin, I reached in to retrieve the stapler. Upon removing it, I realised that my hand had become somewhat stuck in the bin due to it’s “modern” design. It had holes all over it, and somehow I’d managed to insert my hand into one of said holes while bending over into it. It didn’t seem to go in as easily as it went out.

It wasn’t long before Robb Flynn Jnr appeared in the area, as he seems to do whenever I’m making an idiot of myself.

‘My God,’ he exclaimed loudly. ‘Is your hand stuck in the bin?’

‘Yes,’ I hissed. ‘Hold my stuff for me.’

‘What was that?’ he shouted. ‘DID YOU SAY YOUR HAND WAS STUCK IN A BIN? WHAT KIND OF STRANGE THING WOULD YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET YOUR HAND STUCK IN A BIN?’ he continued.

Beetroot was nothing compared to my face. He was winning this round in our little ongoing battle, and he knew it. ‘I was bending over into the bin to get a stapler,’ I explained.

‘YOU WERE BENDING OVER INTO A BIN!’ he hollered. ‘YOU’RE THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW OF WHO BENDS INTO BINS!’ He also seemed to be making a point of using excessive hand movement when he talked, to highlight the fact that he had free use of his limbs and I didn’t.

Eventually he pulled out my hand, but told me that I ‘owed him one’. Perhaps this is the end of our little war? Please, please…

*****

Once I’d moved all my gear to my new desk, one of the local executives in the area welcomed me to our new office.

‘For some reason, there aren’t that many men in this area,’ he announced. ‘So, all men will be allocated their own urinal in the toilets.’ Silently, I rejoiced that there would be no more unisex toilets shenanigans.

‘You,’ he nodded at me, ‘get the urinal closest to the door.’

I pouted.

‘Where the females can sometimes see you on their way to the women’s toilets,’ he continued.

I frowned.

‘Are you married?’ he asked. I was a little thrown.

‘Uh… no?’ I replied. I wasn’t sure if this was a rhetorical question or not.

‘Yes, I didn’t think that made sense,’ he sighed, pointing to the ring on my finger. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to try and set you up with someone.’

Not another matchmaking manager! Doesn’t he know that interoffice romance is bad? Especially for me - it’d be psuedo interoffice romance…

‘First of all, we have to get you some new clothes,’ he began. ‘Your first challenge is to try and wear tshirts that don’t involve metal bands. Or cars,’ he added, nodding at the tshirt I happened to be wearing at the time.

‘What, this?’ I asked. ‘This isn’t a car tshirt. This is Fuel, as in Fuel the band.’

‘Oh?’ He seemed rather skeptical. ‘I don’t seem to have heard of this band.’

‘Yeah, they’re okay,’ I explained. ‘They just released their second album. You might have heard them, they’ve been in the top forty and all that.’

‘Is that so? Name one of their songs,’ he demanded.

‘Um…’ I racked my brain. Not being a big fan of the band (I got the tshirt as a freebie in a record store), I couldn’t easily recall a song title. ‘Ah! Their last single was Hemorrhage In My Hands,’ I realised.

‘WHAT!’ the manager yelled.

‘Hemorrhage In My Hands,’ I repeated.

‘What kind of sick fuck ARE you?!’ the manager spat, goggle-eyed.

‘That’s the name of the-’

‘You’re a sick fuck!’

And that was that.

*****

Adam’s Favourite Moments In His Part-Time Career As A Bouncer

Adam’s a graphic designer by trade, but doesn’t mind indulging in a bit of bounce-action every weekend. He’s not your average bouncer (you know, most bouncers are the kind of guys who go ‘Oooh!’ when they walk past a digital clock that reads 4.44); but he has presented his top three moments in his bouncing job for us here:

1. Once a big gorilla-type guy was giving me the evil eye all night. It wasn’t long before he started causing trouble and grabbing women’s breasts, so I grabbed him by his nipples, tweaked them until they could be used for bungee jumping, dragged him by one arm through the door and then ejected him into the street with a swift kick kindly asked him to leave.

2. A fight broke out between two blokes and one of them smashed a glass against the other guy, so I grabbed one of them, hurled him to the floor, pinned him down in a headlock until he cried, tossed him over my shoulder and threw him out to the pavement explained the benefits of being a pacifist to them, and they both stood up, apologised to each other and shook hands.

3. A buck’s party rumbled into the hotel, and it wasn’t long before they started giving the bouncers some trouble. When one of them threw a punch at me, I blocked it quickly, delivered a hook right back at him, and we dragged the troublemakers outside to the pavement, where we gave a few swift kicks to the main troublemaker for good measure ducked and offered to take him outside for a breath of fresh air, so he could think about the potential consequences of his actions. He realised that he could have been in a lot of trouble and thanked me for my troubles, so I gave him a free drink card.

*****

Big Mo has suggested that our group takes a day off work for a team-building session. Nobody can seem to decide what we should do. I knew that someone would immediately suggest rock climbing - this is such a cliched vanilla choice for team-building stuff. (Also, I’m a weak pussy).

‘What about go-karts?’ I suggested. The perfect idea - it APPEARS that you’re getting exercise because you’re moving around so fast, but you’re not really doing anything at all.

‘No,’ Big Mo vetoed immediately. ‘No, no, no. And I say no to go-karts for a reason.’

‘Oh?’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘You might want to cross your legs,’ he warned.

‘Oh, not one of these stories,’ I sighed.

‘We went go-karting on a team-building day at one of my old jobs. One of the guys was incredibly tall, and had to jam himself into the kart. You know how the steering wheel is attached to a shaft that rotates? Well, he took a sharp hairpin turn, but got his nuts caught in the gears.’

‘HA HA HA HA!’ Vanessa Undresser suddenly burst out in laughter.

‘So he ended up with a lost testicle and a ruptured scrotum,’ Big Mo lamented. Behind him, Kazza’s face was filled with horror at the story.

‘Oh my God,’ Vanessa wiped a tear from her eye. However, this was but the calm in the storm. ‘BWAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HAAAAA!’ she erupted.

‘Okay, so no go-karting then,’ McCraig quickly decided. ‘What about something like orienteering?’

‘NO!’ Vanessa shrieked. ‘I’m going to see a ruptured scrotum before this team-building day is out, I swear to God!’

*****

We were all due to attend a meeting shortly after this discussion, and Vanessa Undresser couldn’t stop giggling.

She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep her mind on issues at hand, either: Kazza looked dead bored, but this was probably because she’s still fairly new and doesn’t understand everything that’s going on.

So instead of listening to the meeting, she decided to interrupt. She was paying particular interest to a fancy-looking new personal organiser one of the managers was playing with.

‘Hey,’ she nodded at the manager. ‘That looks fancy.’

‘Um,’ replied the manager. ‘Yes.’ The person leading the meeting was a little taken aback.

‘So, like, how much is it worth?’ she continued to probe.

‘Well, that’s, ah… that’s sort of personal,’ the manager excused himself.

‘Is it over a grand?’ she persisted. Some people began to shift around in their seats.

‘Um.. um…’

‘Is it fifteen hundred?’ I began clicking my pen in embarassment, wishing there was something I could do to make her stop.

‘Like I said, uh, uhm… it’s sort of personal,’ the manager replied. But the way he was fondling it and making sure everyone saw it, you know he’s dying to shout it out: THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!

*****

Jeb Official Bad Things: Moments Of True Nerd Revelation

I was poking around our local Harvey Norman store, doing my best to avoid the videogame section (there’s a lesson to be learnt there, and that lesson is that a child’s voice is their favourite toy).

I grabbed a copy of the new Monkey Island game. These games are an old favourite of mine. When I took it to the check-out:

Check-out lady: Oh, this is supposed to be good.
Me: Yep. In fact, I’ve been buying the Monkey Island games since they first game out, in 1990.
Check-out lady: (looks strangely at me) Really? Gee. I didn’t think… (she pauses, and I anticipate she’s going to say ‘I didn’t think there were any older Monkey Island games’, and I prepare to gloat) … I didn’t think anyone I know even OWNED a computer in 1990.

Moments of true nerd revelation - they strike me down frequently.

*****

When I moved my desk last week, it took up a whole day just to shuffle everything around. As a result, I lost a whole day’s worth of work. I realised I could probably try to palm it off to some people around my old working area.

‘Could you finish this stuff off for me?’ I asked the lady who used to sit behind me, as I shoved a pile of paper into her in-tray.

‘Sure,’ she replied, in a tone of voice which hinted she may as well have added ‘and I’ll be riding into hell on a chocolate horse this afternoon, too!’

It’s scenarios like this which I try to prevent by implementing Just Hello calls. That way, if I ever need to call on someone at my work who I rarely speak to for a favour, they’re more likely to oblige. Eg:

Me: Hello, it’s Jeb.
Workmate: Oh. What do you want?
Me: Nothing! I’m just calling to say hello.
Workmate: Ah. I thought you wanted something.
Me: No. I’m just saying g’day.
Workmate: Oh. Good, then.
Me: Yes. Just Hello.

Make one of these calls about every fortnight to around fifteen people, and you’ll get favours done whenever you want.

I’ve realised I’m soon going to have to call on a workmate for a rather big favour. The Just Hello calls might not cover the impact, so I decided to buy the lady in question some morning tea at the cafeteria.

We sat down at a table and ordered some coffee. ‘You look nice today,’ I brownnosed. I was going to make the most of this meeting.

‘Yes,’ she responded, patting her jacket. ‘It’s because it’s black.’

‘Black?’ I wasn’t sure what she meant.

She sighed and explained. ‘Black is in fashion.’

‘Oh. I’m never in fashion,’ I excused myself.

‘Well, wear black,’ she advised. ‘Black is the new black.’

‘What happened to black?’ I wondered aloud.

‘It’s just… you know… black,’ she dismissed with a wave of her hand. ‘Now, everyone wears BLACK.’

‘Right,’ I struggled to understand. No wonder I only wear metal and car tshirts.

‘Will you marry me?’ she swiftly changed the subject.

‘List your redeeming features,’ I requested.

‘Oh, I need it for my visa - I have to go back to the UK soon if I’m not hitched.’ She pulled her best attempt at a lusty look at me. ‘Although I am married in the UK already.’

‘Why didn’t you say so earlier? I embrace bigamy!’ I threw my hands in the air.

Spying on us from the sidelines behind the cafeteria counter, Robb Flynn Jnr mistook my hand-throwing-in-ecstacy for hand-throwing-in-fits-of-depression.

‘Is he whinging to you?’ he called out to the UK woman. Without giving her a chance to reply, he continued. ‘Don’t listen to him. The trick is, you don’t validate his whinging.’

I shot him a filthy look and he smirked. ‘I’m not whinging,’ I whinged.

‘Ohhhh!’ his eyes suddenly lit up. ‘Are you buttering her up so she’ll do a favour for you?’ I shot him a look akin to what I imagine my face would contort to if I ruptured my scrotum, and regretted ever telling him of my Just Hello favour-inducing scheme.

The woman sitting across from me looked at me with eyes slitted, then turned to Robb for more information.

‘See, he phones people just to say hello, but he’s only buttering you up so he can ask you favours later,’ he continued.

‘Right,’ the woman replied as she stood up to walk away.

‘Does this mean we’re not getting married?’ I called after her.

‘He calls them his Just Hello calls!’ Robb shrieked at her back.

*****

I sat in the cafeteria for a little while longer, stewing in my juices and trying to concoct a way to wreak revenge on Robb. Before long, Big Mo appeared with Kazza in tow and asked me if I’d like to go out to a seafood restaraunt for lunch with them.

‘Feel like some seafood?’ he asked me.

‘Nah,’ I declined. ‘Seafood changed for me ever since I ate eel by mistake once.’

‘You freaked out at eel? That’s nothing. I’ve eaten bull testicles before,’ he boasted.

‘Actually, I don’t think bull testicles would bother me that much,’ I decided, wondering if being gay had anything to do with this. ‘I imagine they’re akin to a round dim sim.’

‘Hmmm,’ Big Mo turned this over in his mind. ‘More ovular,’ he declared.

It definitely takes a gay man to know that.

*****

A Proposed Business Model:

What’s an easy way to inject new life into a near-dead industry? Mix it with the most vibrant industry around today!

It’s rare to find young adults aspiring to enter a life of farming nowadays. Farming is well known to be one of the most highly shrinking industries. So: why not combine it with the IT industry to inject new life into a struggling industry?

I present: Jeb Internet Farms.

The premise is simple. Instead of tempting young computer nerds with mere inner-city jobs that have few benefits, we simply get our nerds to work on the fields a few hours a day.

And why do we do this? Because we give them their own souped-up computer with broadband internet access, and all the network games they can handle. See, nerds don’t really care where they are, as long as they’re in front of a computer screen playing Quake III. And if that means they’re confined to some hick farm in the middle of nowhere, so be it! If Farmer Jones gets his wheat taken care of to boot, all the better!

Jeb Internet Farms: just like your motherboard used to make.

*****

Standing on the train all the way home is something I prefer not to do, but it’s often unavoidable. I usually try to read on the trip home, but the way the train jolts around, you usually get thrown into people because there’s nothing to hold onto.

It all became rather difficult when my mobile phone started ringing during a bumpy section of rail track. I was trying to keep my balance by using my knees as suspenders, and attempted to hold my book under one arm while I fished my phone from my bag.

I answered it, and it was my mum. ‘Mum, can you hang on for a second?’ I asked her.

‘Why? Why? What’s wrong? What’s all that noise in the background?’ she demanded.

The train lurched to the left, and a cavalcade of people flew into me. The only way I could attempt to stand up was by clenching a pole behind me with my buttocks.

‘Mum, just hang on… I’m.. I’m..’ a balding man flew into me head-first, and I made an ‘oof’ sound.

‘What? What?’ my mum screamed.

‘Mum, hang on - I’m CLENCHING,’ I explained.

She explained to me she was calling because my Right Wing Aunt was in trouble with the police again, and was in hospital. Apparently the police drove into her farm property to question her over drugs, and she rode out on a horse with a gun.

Unfortunately, the horse bucked and she was thrown to the ground. The next thing she knew she was coming to in a hospital. A doctor asked her some questions to check that she didn’t have amnesia. When asked who the prime minister was, she said it was Bob Hawke, and when asked what year we were in she replied it was 2010. We were kind of hoping this would effect her personality as well, but she’s been released and is up to her old psychotic librarian tricks once more.

*****

My car’s registration expired last month. I really should do something about it.

I’m getting sick of walking outside every morning and seeing that monster sit there. It’s never going to start again - the only way I can get rid of it is by getting a wrecking yard to tow it. Even then, I’d probably lose money.

So it seems sufficient enough for me to walk outside every morning, tut-tut at it, sigh, then walk back inside. I’ll do something about it soon… just not now.

Then again, perhaps it could be an idea to get the car going again after a taxi incident last Friday. I was catching a taxi to one of my work’s other offices for a weekly meeting, and I could have sworn I’d seen the taxi driver somewhere before.

We sped into the city and waited at an intersection, when the purple Barina slammed into the back of the taxi.

‘Waaaargh!’ the taxi driver screamed, and leaped out of his door. As he stalked towards the driver of the Barina, I noticed he’d left the taxi meter on. Was he going to give this to me for free? Maybe I should press the red button on the meter. Then again, maybe that might add more to my fare. Hmm.

I looked back at the driver screaming at the Barina bimbo. From what I could understand, her bumper bar was jammed onto the taxi’s towbar. She decided to reverse away, but simply pulled the taxi with her. The driver was screaming like a maniac at this stage.

She reversed harder, and with a thunk the taxi was freed. I quickly realised that the taxi’s handbrake was off, and I was rolling into the middle of an intersection. I fumbled to my right for the handbrake, and noticed with horror that the handbrake simply wasn’t there. Then I noticed it was under the steering wheel - one of those new-fangled stupid handbrakes.

I looked at the photograph of the driver in his taxi license, and compared it to the man outside screaming at the Barina driver. Similar, I concluded, but one was slightly redder and more upset.

It was when the taxi driver screamed ‘You… you… BASTARDO!’ at the Barina driver that everything fell into place: this was the spooky Bastardo taxi driver I’d encountered a few weeks ago!

The driver huffed back into the driver’s seat, noticed the meter still running and swore under his breath. I was too scared to say anything for the rest of the trip, although in an attempt to lighten the mood, I pointed to another car with a dent in it and said ‘Hey - he’s been in a crash too! Ha ha ha!’

The driver pulled to the side of the road. Thankfully, I was quite close to where I needed to go, but it didn’t stop the taxi driver from ordering me out immediately, fueled by an enraged cry of ‘BASTARDO!’

*****

Jeb Official Bad Things: Mysterious Kitchen Bench Items

You know you don’t clean your place often enough when you find strange black things on the kitchen bench, and you’re not quite sure if they’re coffee beans or rat shit.

*****

Dance CD Reviews By My Sister (Whose Favourite Musical Genre Just Happens To Be Big Band Music, Thank You Very Much)

Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars: Noise, noise. Putrid noise! Terrible crap. You need to be on drugs just to enjoy it in the first place!

Madonna - Music: Crap! Crap! Absolute crap! You need to be on drugs just to enjoy it in the first place!

Cafe Del Mar Volume 7: What is THIS shite? I can’t believe it! You need to be coming down from drugs just to enjoy it in the first place!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2000 at 6:38 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.