A snapshot...

Non Blondie: You bought more bread! We've got so much bread in the freezer now.

Me: Yeah we have heaps of bread and bread related products.

NB: We almost have as much stuff in there as the others.*

Me: Yeah, but at least our bread is whole, edible bread, not just random gross bits that no one else wants, like a bag full of umm... bread rind or something.

[Long pause]

Me: Uh, when I said bread rind, I meant crust.

NB: Do you always have to do things the hard way?


This conversation exists because our flatmates have filled the freezer with the offal and other junk that they eat which includes, but is not limited to chicken feet, chicken heads, chicken liver and some unidentifiable part of a pig which may or may not be genital in nature.
That's right- Imagine coming home from work to a bowlful of fried chicken's heads peering up at you, their beaks suspended mid-squawk and their beady little eyes all shriveled and raisin-like in appearance. Then imagine thinking "What smells like a homeless man's warm, urine-soaked pants?", then you spy a pot on the stove and realise it's the source of the smell and then you think "OH MY GOD THEY ARE BOILING A POT OF URINE!", but then you open the pot and realise that instead it contains some weird things and some more chicken parts, then you throw up in your mouth a little before running up the stairs into your room and spraying so much Febreeze into their air that it coats the inside of your lungs and every time you sneeze, crisp, freshly laundered linen flies out your nose.
IMAGINE THIS. THIS IS HOW I LIVE.

A recap and some other junk...

Well, needless to say, my secret meeting with the CEO went well today. Whilst two of my colleagues don't have jobs as of next week, I used my charm and boyish wiles to convince her that I was awesome and that I could single-handedly turn things around.
Or something like that. Actually nothing like that. I had to be very honest and admit fault but it seemed to work out alright. There was an unnecessarily large amount of talk of office culture though. I found this funny because this is a workplace overrun with middle-aged women with nothing better to do than talk about when they had a cup of tea once that was so hot that the cup melted a mark into the top of their desk and they had to hide it with paper for a week because they'd only been working there for a little while and were afraid they'd lose their job.
Imagine banal conversation like that. All. The. Fucking. Day.
Although I lie. These conversations are punctuated with me being told what smart-casual means.
"So we all have to come along to this event tomorrow night. Dress code is smart-casual. Jiminy that means you should probably wear a collared shirt or something. Maybe jeans, I think that would be ok."
Ahh...yes. Thank you for clarifying smart casual for me. Unfortunately this means I ironed my string vest and camouflage three quarter cargo pants for nothing. Damn.

In an effort to boost the morale in the place, they've opted to install umbrellas in the middle of the groups of desks. Like, big fuck off novelty beach umbrellas. No shit. It's ridiculous.
These are the kind of people that make every second Friday "Dress As Your Favourite Pet Cat Day" because they think it will be so good for morale, not to mention FUCKING HILARIOUS to see Laneesha from accounts dressed up as little Mr Tinkles. They forget however, that no one else in the office owns a cat, let alone multiple felines from which to pick a favourite. Everyone also knows that you let your cats sleep in your bed and that your just-used vibrator has picked up so much cat-hair from your sheets that it looks like an Alsatian's disembodied tail. Fools.

So at the moment, there's a big taffeta umbrella perched gaudily over a desk. A green one, with a parrot on it and fairy lights.
The other one is pink with flowers embroidered on it. And tassels.
I work near colourful umbrellas and tassels, however I'm not a cocktail waiter at a burlesque club. What has my life come to?

Why don't you just shape some shit into a ball, roll it around in your cat-hair sheets and call it a fucking coconut. Because that's closer to paradise than these stupid umbrellas you're surrounding me with.

So being the singular synthesiser of testosterone in a thick swamp of estrogen producing manatees I mockingly declared that I felt left out of the festivities as i didn't have an umbrella above my desk.
Bad move Jiminy. Manatees cannot detect sarcasm.
Yesterday a package arrived in the post for me.
"Open it." My boss says, grinning daftly with her fish-mouth.
I sigh and pull away the packaging.
It's a wide-brimmed hat with corks dangling off it. It even had a kangaroo printed on the front of it. Because that's what we all do in Australia these days. Seriously, live in the now. Why didn't you just get me a brochure for EXPO 88 or a block of cheese signed by Peter Russell Clarke. Why stop there though? Buy me the box set of Crocodile Dundee videos wrapped in prawns and soaked in Eucalyptus oil. Or save yourself the trouble and just write me a card that says HEY YOU'RE AUSTRALIAN. Cos that's about as funny as your fucking hat.

It's like me buying her some severed heads, cos isn't that what the English were into at some stage? Cutting off heads and sticking them to things to ward off their enemies? Or was it burning people? Maybe I could bring her some matches and a some sticks to make a pyre.
They wonder why there's such a high staff turn-over? Geez... I dunno guys, it wouldn't have anything to do with the incompetent managers. Maybe it's because there's NOT ENOUGH UMBRELLAS.

Anyways, I'm getting all worked up. The point of this was to paint a picture of the 'culture' in my office. It may seem to you that it paints a more accurate picture of my current absence of sanity but frankly, I care not. Me and Other Me are very happy with ourselves.

Anyways, my office sucks and I'm powerless to change it, unless I magically develop ever-shrinking ovaries overnight and miraculously turn into a bitter, thick-skulled ass hat.
Quit, you say? I'd like to but I need the cash as The Girl and I are saving furiously (which I imagine would look like a tiny kid frantically jamming handfuls of bank notes into a piggy bank) for our big Europe/India/South East Asia/Back to Australia trip at the end of June.

Looks like I'm in Grit-Your-Teeth-And-Deal-With-It City for three more months. Hooray.
Oh well, I hear it's full of umbrellas culture at least.

Holy shitballs!

It's been a damn long while, homies.

This is mainly due to the Draconian measures that have been introduced to my workplace.
My boss sits beside me and frequently leans over and asks what I'm doing. If, god forbid, I'm taking two minutes out to check my email I get asked why I'm wasting time and not doing ALL THE WORK YOU HAVE, WHY IS THIS?

To which i shrug and scream at her in my head....

Despite all my rage i am still just a rat in a cage.

Anyways, my place of work is about to implode in a maelstrom of menopausal wrath. It's all cloak and dagger, with whispers in the corridor secret meetings and all kinds of junk.

I have to leave in five minutes for a secret meeting in a nearby coffee shop. I would not be surprised if there are Gregorian chants involved.

I think the meeting could be because the banshee manager overheard a few of us going to town (in the insulting sense, not the sexual one, you bunch of degenerates) on them the other day. And by overheard, I mean sneaked into the hallway and listened. Which is retarded behaviour from people who claim to be more professional than a hat full of doctors.

The problems may be that they heard the following terms being bandied about;

- Fish mouthed wench
- Fish wife
- 88 (Referring to the two fat ladies that are our managers.)
- Captain Aubergine and the Egg-Shaped Crusader (again, a nasty personal attack which i really should refrain from if I ever intend to kick it with Jeebus)
- Incompetent, irritating, thick-skulled, daft, retards.
- Cockwits.

Apparently this could be classed as subordination or some bullshit.

I don't see how.

Meeting begins in a couple of mins. I gotta get going.

Will give you the details upon return. And i'll post more, k?
Is anyone even left around here? Or did you get bored like, three months ago and give up and go to find your gutter humour froma more reputable and intelligent source, like say from a 10 year old?

It's ok. I understand.

Speaking of the future...

My last post got me thinking about the future and how disappointed people must be with the present. Which coincidentally was the future back then.
You see, everyone's lives were built on the hope that one day, they'd be zipping to the space-port diner a la The Jetsons. Granted, there is similarities- Lots of dads these days work part time in factories, but the difference is that their kids don't get looked after by Ruby Robot; they get left in the car with the windows up and occasionally fed by Rosa, the Hispanic alien from next door.

End digression...

Now here's some edu-ma-cation for all you non-Australians.
Back when I was a wee little tacker, there used to be this awesome show on TV called 'Beyond 2000'.
To an eight year old boy, the name alone was the most exciting thing ever since that time dad left his special cup too close to the high-chair.
The show provided an insight into current developments in science and technology and how they would make the lives of those living in the year 2000 so much more luxurious/simpler/exciting/less baby-vomit-green ridden.
So there was concept cars which had magical future things like electric windows, robot co-drivers and digital speedometers.
There was calculators that FIT INTO THE PALM OF YOUR HAND and could do all kinds of crazy things like addition.
There was laser guided kitchen utensils, jet powered steam irons, anaerobic dust projectors, gaseous plasma heaters and televisions that you didn't have to get up off your orange and green couch to change the channels on.
Fucking sweet.
To me, a dumb eight year old that once got so excited by a tv show about crocodiles that he jumped on the couch and fell onto the coffee table splitting his head open thusly getting himself rushed to hospital and receiving a fuck-tonne of stitches down his forehead, this show was like grown-ups had stolen all my Lego ideas and turned them into awesome, actual, radical things.
If I could have had a wet dream, I would have had one, probably. Instead I think I just wet the bed a few times.
Anyways, my head was filled with these wondrous devices and I longed for the years to pass so one day, in the years after the year 2000, I could fly to school with a jet pack and do my homework on this magical computing device which only needed TWO WHOLE ROOMS to operate and maybe even use electrical wiring to talk to people that also had dedicated computing device rooms in their homes.
I thought the future held alot.

Here I am, almost ten years 'beyond 2000' and I can't even get bullet-points to work properly in Word, I still have to tie my own shoelaces, I can't fucking hover/jet/teleport anywhere and to top it all off, the false prophets that came up with this programme of lies and fraudulent dreams have gone and re-made the TV programme under a new heading.

Now fair play, back in '81 they probably thought they were pretty safe with going with the 'Beyond 2000' name. I mean, 20 years or so is a long time in science. Unless your talking about evolutionary biology, in which case 20 years is fuck all. But in the 'science' that this show referred to 20 years was a long time and I can't fault them for expecting some of the things they showcased to have developed into usable technologies come the big 2-0 (0-0).

My problem's not with 'Beyond 2000', it is with the producers who decided that rather than risk the embarrassment of hazarding a guess and going with 'Beyond 2020', they decided to go with the title 'Beyond Tomorrow' for the new show.

Piss-weak.

Beyond 2000 was about things that may come to fruition in the (kind of but not really) distant future. Sure they made some calls that look stupid now, but dammit, in the 80's they put their spandex-clad asses on the line and I respect that.

Beyond Tomorrow is a cop out. Going from the title, Beyond Tomorrow could be a show about Thursday. And anyone can guess which technologies will exist on Thursday.
"Oh look honey, they're doing a special on electric kettles."
Lame.

The least they could have done is gone for 'Beyond 3000', at least then we wouldn't be alive to ridicule them when their isotopic fusion hats never come to be mass-produced or when the anti-gravity super car fails to be developed or when they fail to stop global warming using a series of mirrors, some gaffa tape and a bucket of liquid nitrogen.

But no, we get Beyond Tomorrow.
I predict that beyond tomorrow, I'll be a disillusioned 23 year old who wastes all his time working, complaining about working, writing drivel on a blog and hating on meaningless tv shows.

You can call me Nostradamus.

Reasons I love Edinburgh

This morning I decided to not sit in on the things I had organised for work. Instead I decided to do the tourist thing and go for a stroll around Edinburgh. Being daft I decided to do this in t-shirt and thin jumper.
Hello, dumb-ass. You're in Edinburgh. Put some fucking clothes on.
Needless to say i got cold pretty quickly.
I ventured back and got my jacket, laptop and my hat. (Yes, the one the homeless guy was into)
All packed up and looking like such a tourist that even some Japanese ladies with visors, big fuck-off cameras and pants-suits pointed at me and yelled 'Stupid tourist!", I set off. Within 15 minutes I had decided that Edinburgh is the awesome.

These are the reasons why:

- I climbed the Scott Monument. Awesome panoramic views over the harbour, old town, mountains and castle. On my way back down I noticed the best graffiti ever.
"Peanut woz ere. 15-7-79"
This on the world's largest ever monument created in honour of a writer.
Fucking poetic. Nice one Pea.

- I swear I've seen Christopher Lambert waiting for a bus at least 5 times. It's disconcerting to say the least. One guy even grabbed me and said "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!... more minute until this bus arrives, I've been waiting for ages."
I'm lying again. But seriously, there's heaps of dudes that look like they're an Immortal from Highlander.

- Through a completely random series of occurrences, I just snapped myself a photo of the First Minister of Scotland (Which is their version of a Prime Minister) arm in arm with two guys who were protesting against the proposed changes to Scottish immigration law which will mean no more Curry chefs will be allowed to migrate from India. Or something to that effect. Anyways, I somehow found myself out the front of the Scottish Parliament, then I saw these guys with funny hats holding boards with all kinds of wicked slogans like "Save Curry!" The next thing I know I see them all huddled around someone and I think "CAPTAIN CURRY HAS COME TO SAVE THEM"
But no, it's the prime minister of fucking Scotland, wearing a little white curry chef's hat hugging all these Indian dudes. I took a photo because it's not every day you see the leader of a nation hugging a guy who's occupation involves giving people diarrhoea.

- I found a shop that sells Scottish souvenirs called 'Thistle do nicely'. Best regional-based store-name pun so far.

- I saw two dudes walking around in V for Vendetta masks. Which I thought was totally lame and if I had my way, I'd tie them to a stake and put fireworks in their eyes. But, Jeebus had taken care of things for me. So rather than forcing me to you know, commit murder or something, he just made these dudes such massive nerds that they still had to wear their massive coke-bottle glasses on the outside of the masks!
Ha! Way to be a revolutionary, Captain Degenerative Ocular Faculties. I decided his sidekick was called Myopia Man.

- I saw the Edinburgh School of English. Which sounds funny and weird to me. Probably sounds weirder to someone who doesn't speak English.

- I threw a pebble at a pigeon and hit it.

- I saw a tiny orange tractor driving up the steepest hill ever. Seriously, it was the size of a small ride-on lawnmower, but with a fully enclosed cabin and stuff.
What, no one else finds this funny? Fuck you. Go see television and tell it you want your imagination back. Also get it to eviscerate Ray Romano or whatever the fuck his name is. God I despise that guy. Also tell it to go drop off a map and a helicopter to the poor bastards on Lost. For fucks sake. Someone sort their shit out for them. How long can you not know where you are for? Tards.

Did I just lose COMPLETE TRACK of what I was talking about? The Scottish drunkard reading over my shoulder said "Aye, yer doom foch." Shut up, Christopher Lambert.

- There's a massive number of gingers over here. They have hair that's like, blazing red. Which makes me look like a brunette. (I have somewhat auburn hair. Shutup.) Finally I feel like I fit in. It's like I'm a monkey that was separated from my monkey crew when I was a monkey baby and made to walk around crashing cymbals together and wearing a fez and now I've finally been reunited with my kin. Although now I don't smell like my monkey brethren, so they all claw and bite my face and throw their stinky monkey shit at me.
Umm.. yeah.

I'm going to make a proposal for the Scottish tourist board. My slogan is going to be:

"Come to Scotland and be reunited with you monkey homies whilst the eyes of a thousand Christopher Lamberts and gingers burn into the back of your skull. Also you can throw things at pigeons and you'll actually hit them."

So yeah, that's why I love Edinburgh.

Photo evidence to come soon.

Futile

She sits beside me now.
She's close. Close enough I can hear her laboured breathing. Close enough I can hear her typing with her index fingers at a rate somewhere around five words per minute. Close enough I can hear her make little perplexed noises when she can't work out how to use a spreadsheet.
"It's all so confusing innit!?" she laughs.
"Hmm" I agree through a clenched jaw.
She rustles through the stack of emails that lie on her desk, printed out for 'ease of finding'. Alot of things will be easier to find once they cut down all the trees needed to support her unnecessary printing habit. I alt-tab as she tries to look at my screen. Again.
She's close enough I can smell her breath.
It's a damp combination of burnt cheese and coffee. It would seem she's not a fan of oral hygiene. Or perhaps her mouth is open so often, spewing forth words whose sole function is to mask her ineptness and lack of knowledge, that a horde of bacterium have colonised the white, scum-rich valley in her tongue and her yellow teeth, where they're binary fission-ing themselves an army of stench.
She closes her mouth and I nod in feigned agreement of whatever it was she'd been talking about.
I resume my work and listen as she bellows across the office organising catch-ups, run-throughs, sort-outs and a horde of other time wasting activities disguised with hyphens.
She's mid-sentence confirming a progress-check when she tangentially begins telling someone how she 'found a piece of paper in her backyard on the weekend that was addressed to a place down the street and it was a bill from like, three years ago so she was wondering if she should take it back to the address or whether it would be even worth it because she doubts that the same people even live there any more because her friend next door told her they used to hear them having fights late at night and they even thought that the wife may have been cheating because sometimes there'd be a car that wasn't theirs parked out the front during the day while the husband was at work and then they just packed up and moved one day.'
Somewhere inside of me, a chunk of my soul bursts into flames, fanned by the knowledge she earns twice the amount I do. The smoke rises up and catches in the back of my throat.
"Crazy, innit!?" She asks
The smoke passes over my lips and presents itself as a disinterested response.
"Yeah, sure."

She continues blabbering and the sound fades out as I look to her coffee. She's left it sit while she tells someone about how she thinks she's getting the flu because her joints are swelling, which reminds her of this guy she used to know that wore a kilt and had funny looking knees.
I stare at her coffee and the gears in my head begin to click. Slowly at first, then rapidly as an idea begins to formulate.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

She sits beside me now.
She's close. Close enough I can put drops of correction fluid into her coffee when she's not paying attention.
The label says Tipp-Ex. Poisonous. Should not be consumed.
I figure five drops a day should eventually make her ill enough to need time off work.
A stir of her coffee and a genuine smile before she sits back down beside me and sips her latte.

I repeat this every day.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

A few days in I think she looks paler. She'll be ill soon. I rejoice as I imagine days without her. The freedom to do what I want at my desk without her gazing across and asking why I'm smiling at my computer screen. Days without her telling stories about how she once had a feather stuck in her cardigan but she had no idea how it had got there because she didn't know of any birds with feathers that colour.
Days without her. I smile.

Weeks pass, maybe even months. The empty bottles of Tipp-ex fill a small box in my drawer.
I can't put up with her much longer. The nonsensical stories. The constant catch-ups. The unending incompetence. The barrage of stupidity. Every. Fucking. Day.
She's unwittingly drank seven and a bit bottles now, surely she'll be ill soon.

I'm at breaking point. The rage wells up inside me and I'm starting to think I'm going insane.
I glance at her with crazed eyes as she finishes telling someone a story.
"... I mean, I wasn't even sure if they owned cats, but apparently it doesn't matter because they eventually got arthritis and we couldn't take them on holidays to Spain anymore."

My teeth crack and my hands are balled into tight fists.

"Crazy innit!?" She asks me, her teeth now smiling a brilliant white under the office's fluorescent lights.

Douche alarm! DOUCHE ALARM!!!

If anyone is feeling a bit down and out or is questioning their validity as a human or thinks they are the scummiest piece of worthless crap on the planet may I offer you some kind words?

K, thanks, here's they are.

-At least you're not this guy.-

Wow.
Choas, I bow before your illiterate, bigoted, numb-skulled, assholish douche-a-rama.

Seriously. Choas? Did a butterfly flap its wings somewhere and the resulting winds rearraged the letters in your name?

For those of you who are too lazy/retarded/weak to click the link, here's a small slice of the fried gold that is Choas' ripping entry on his CRAZY, but totally SMOOTH pick-up efforts.

" I was dancing with a girl from my work that were just friends and I would just go up and start like grinding on other chicks from behind my friend in front and be like sry and stuff.."

Wow... And I thought I knew some assholes.
In their heads, the above movement is called a Sex Sandwich of Hot Lust and Sexy Sexness.
To the poor, poor girl trapped between Choas and his friend, who I'm going to call Disordre, it's a Vomit Inducing Asshole Sandwich With A Side Of Sweaty Palms And Tiny Pokey Boners.

And before you say anything, I am very happy with my girlfriend and I came across this through a google search gone awry. I would never ever want to associate with any of this 'Pickup Artist' nonsense. Subway Sandwich Artists are more artist than you are, Choas. Plus, the sandwiches at Subway never involve two sleazebags and unsolicited grinding.

Unless you opt for the Skeezy Mystery Footlong. Which I'd recommend you don't.


Choas, you are douche of the week. Congrats.

Stop calling me, fools.

I just had a phone call at work that went like this:

Me: Hello, Jiminy speaking.

Guy: I want a Stella McCartney Adidas tersports hat.

(Long Silence)

Me: Sorry, I didn't quite catch that, what was it you were...

Guy: (interrupting) Stella McCartney Adidas tersports hat.

(At this stage I started getting self conscious that my voice was monotonous and he'd mistaken me for one of those automated voice recognition bots. Luckily there wasn't the sound of him mashing buttons to try and get back to the main menu. Also I couldn't think of any system that would have a question where one of the spoken response options would be 'Stella McCartney Adidas tersports hat'*)

Me: I'm not sure what you're talking about, we're actually an organisation that does 'x' (where x is completely unrelated to Stella McCartney Adidas tersports hats)

Guy: Oh, so you don't know about Stella McCartney Adidas tersports hats?

Me: (Tersely) No.

(Long silence)

Guy: Ok.

(Hangs up)
-----

What the fuck? What is wrong with you man? And how many times do you have to say Stella McCartney tersports hat?
I did some research and it turns out that a Stella McCartney tersports hat looks like this:

What a shit beanie.

Who wants a hat like that one bad enough to call someone about it anyways? You could get one like that out of a bin. Or an even better one off a guy who lived in a bin. Also What makes a plain blue beanie 'designer'? It's not pleated in some crazy way. There's no asymmetrical lapels. It's wool, spun into string which is then knotted together in a head shape. You're a sham Stella McCartney.

It did remind me of the Bai Long Tong phone call I had a while back...

Phones are crazy.

Fridays are awesome.

Tell me your crazy phone stories. TELL ME THEM!



* Unless the question was "What is the shittest hat ever?"

Slacking...

Yes, I'll be updating properly again soon... Non Blondie and I are just in the middle of moving house, celebrating birthdays, working etc etc etc so am a bit caught up in all that shit to get a chance to post.

I'd do it from work, but the mad vomit fish/lever arch woman has recently finished an advanced course in 'Pathetic Management- Guidelines For Fat No Hopers With Inferiority Complexes' and is doing her best to look busy in order to cover her stupidity, uselessness and complete incompetence.
God, I hate her and her brainless ass.

So yes, more stories and whatnot to come shortly.

In the meantime, go embrace the real world. Or if you're currently in the north of England repair your shattered home after this morning's horrific earthquake disaster. This will probably require you to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING considering the earthquake was about as violent and dangerous as a stoned ladybug in a cotton wool jumpsuit.

If the media says one more thing about this 'horrible earthquake' the ghosts of 110,000 Japanese that have died in actual earthquakes are going to come and rape everyone in England with slabs of broken concrete and be all like "You want to feel real earthquake, bitches?"
So stop talking about it.
I don't want concrete in my ass.
Thank you.

Seven immutable rules...

... for the toilet.

It's alright though, I'm not going to give you a run through (pardon the pun) of some nasty poo rules. Today I'll be giving you the rules of peeing.

Now ladies, you're probably aware that us guys have the benefit of not sitting down to pee. We get the shiny urinal to piss into, which would appear to be convenient, hygienic and doesn't require us to put our ass on something that is still warm from another person's ass. This sounds like a completely good thing with no downsides. And it would be if people were able to follow the Seven Rules of Peeing, which I have developed just now.

1) Always leave a one-person-space buffer where possible.
Do not come and stand beside me and make downs with your zip. Go stand over there where there is heaps of space and absolutely no chance of us crossing the streams and causing a "total protonic reversal".

2) Do not engage in conversation whilst engaged in urination.
Piss talks are not cool. They're possibly the most awkward social situation ever. I don't want to hear how totally wasted you are/upset you are that your girlfriend hates you/your opinions on the inferior quality of the cocktails/reasons why the chick that just knocked you back is a lesbian.
We're two men holding our penises in a tiny room. It's weird already. Stop making it weirder.

3) Don't address another man's wang. Ever.
I don't care if it's big, small, diamond encrusted, semi-automatic or French. You should never in any way address another urinators (I'm just gonna run with that, even though it's not a word) member. Not even in passing or indirectly. Feel free to breach this rule if you are in the market for black eyes and/or broken noses.

4) Learn and implement some physics theories. Or at least some basic principles of fluid dynamics.
Your piss hitting the urinal at 90 degrees results in splatter. Splatter is the ultimate no-no.
There's a thousand angles you can opt for, depending on the shape of the urinal which will avoid you splattering everyone within a 6 foot radius.
There's nothing worse than when you suddenly realise tiny droplets of some fuckwad's piss are glistening in the hair on your arm or leaving little dots on the leg of your jeans. The worst thing is you can't address this in any way without breaching rule number 3. Your only option is to shuffle away from the splatter and hope that they don't have crazy asparagus acid-piss that's going to leave burns.

5) Wash your fucking hands, you filthy sloth.
It's called water and you wash your hands with it. You can even use soap and if you're feeling like it, dry your hands too! This is so that you're not putting your piss on anyone else. You already pissed on the guy beside you Captain Splatters, the least you can do is not touch everyone else with your Super Manky Genito-Hands. Plus your urine soaked hands smell like homeless. Chicks are not into homeless.
If not for hygiene, do it for the ladies. If you've had to read this far to go, "Ok, i'll do it, but only for the ladies" then you sir, are an asshole. An unwashed filthy asshole.

6) Don't make noises.
Seriously. Urinating involves relaxing certain muscles. Relaxing implies there is no requirement for physical exertion. Why are you groaning?
Also, deeply exhaling whilst you're urinating makes it sound like you're masturbating. Stop it. It's nasty and you're creeping me out. If pissing in a room full of men is the closest you come to sexual satisfaction you should seriously look into seppuku. (Not to be confused with bukkake, which coincidentally also requires a room full of men. Eww. Sorry)

7) Pants stay up.
You don't need to pull your pants down to pee, you degenerate. (I've seriously seen a guy do this. It made my brain vomit.)


Now go forth, print these out and put them up in your local pub/bar/school/place where people urinate. If need be, add your own tag and perhaps a poorly spelled comment about someone sucking balls. This should add 'cred' to the rules and increase compliance.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Well?

Since when is calling someone you've just got off the phone to 'Cockface' deemed to be inappropriate for work?

Prudes.

The SAS, well kind of...

No, I'm not talking bout the Special Air Service. This is something more stealthy and possibly more deadly.
Slimy Ass Slugs.

We have slugs in our house.
Not like pets in a terrarium, but rogue night-slugs that sneak in under the cover of darkness, leave trails on the carpet and then exit before anyone awakes.
There are some reasons this scares me.

1) They 'Know'
In the same way that Scientologists 'Know'. But somehow it's worse than listening to/watching Tom Cruise. The slugs know what time we go to bed and what time we wake. They coordinate their slimy reconnaissance missions whilst we sleep.
That's the bit that chills me. Whilst we sleep...

2) I don't know
I know we have a slugs, but I don't know what they want. Or where they come from or whether their intentions are noble or something altogether more insidious.
There are trails which slide around from behind the stove, into the lounge room, then from there it's hard to tell what their objectives are. There's at least two, maybe three slimy little trails on the carpet. The trails usually come out of the kitchen, go under the dining table and loop around the legs of the chairs maybe two or three times and then arch back around and out behind the stove again. What do they want with our chairs? Do they want to sit down? Can slugs even sit?

3) They eat penis
Yes, that's right. Being hermaphrodites all slugs have both male and female organs. The slugs mating ritual consists of two slugs encircling each other and sperm is 'exchanged through the protruding genitalia'. I imagine this to be kind of like a wet high five. Unfortunately for the slugs, sometimes, the corkscrew-shaped protruding genitalia, which is science-talk for 'wangs' get entangled and the slugs have no other choice but to practice apophallation, which is where one slug chews off the other's penis. How's that for sexy time? Wet high five, followed by having your wang chewed off. Eww and oww.
Not to worry though, because once the penis has been chewed off, the slugs can reproduce using their female genitalia. Hooray! Lady-man-slugs!

4) This:
Oh great. that's just what I need. Hermaphrodite gastropod molluscs with infra-red, motion sensing vision hunting me for sport whilst I sleep. Fuck.
Predator creeped me out when I was a kid. And now I have to relive the horror, albeit in slimy slow motion.

If the slime trails start appearing closer to my room, I'm gonna freak out.

Slimy, stealthy, murderous little bastards.

There was an old lady that lived in a shoe...

She did, it's true. And if the fairy tale was set in London, the shoe was probably described as a 'Cosy home, complete with open plan kitchen/lounge, separate loft bedroom and good ventilation.'
It would probably also have cost her about £1000 a month to live in it. I mean, come on! A shoe! Those laces add all kinds of value! You can... umm.. you can... TIE YOUR BIKE UP WITH THEM! Yes, that's right they're the built-in secure bike storage facility. Rent is now £1100 a month. Payable immediately.

"That's right sir, it's your 3 bedroom dream home. No they're not 'holes' they're nature viewing portals. You wanted a door too? Why didn't you specify this earlier. Christ. Actually I've got another place that would be perfect! Oh, wait you're probably gonna tell me you want a roof now aren't you?"

That's right folks, it's house hunting time.
The lease on our current hovel is due to expire at the end of February and there's no chance we're staying any longer in the exorbitantly priced cellar we call home.
As such, I've been tee-ing up inspections with people all over London. We're actually going to move across the city to the the Eastside as it sucks serious ass travelling over an hour each way to get to work.
We had some inspections last night. One place was decent and bearable, the other, not so much.
I hereby declare, people, that there is no such thing as a normal house/flat in London. Unless you're a family that has settled in the suburbs somewhere or you're someone that works in magic and can afford to spend the average person's paycheque on rent.
Needless to say, I'm not a family and I don't work in magic anymore... So options are limited.
Actually, no. They're not completely limited.
If you're into mould/mildew/cramped damp space/funky smells/insane flatmates/zoos then there's tonnes of places you'd adore!
The problem here is that there's no regulation of the real estate industry in the UK. Well none I can see anyways.
So if you have a spare bathroom cupboard, you can rent it out as a single bedroom.
In all of the approximately 15 viewings we've made since we've been here, I'd say very few, if any have been normal dwellings.
The problem is descriptions rarely match reality and as such a these places which sound amazing turn out to be rubbish.
As a service to mankind, I'm going to cut through the jargon for you. I'm just that nice.

When they say... - Located in pleasant suburb - Small bathroom/toilet - Double bedroom - MUST BE CLEAN AND TIDY. Will not stand for plates/cutlery to be left on sink, any items not labelled in fridge will be thrown out. -Dossers ok - Spacious flat - 2 minute walk to tube, but can also catch bus out the front of house. - Flatmates like to cook - 37 year old female flatmate - Refurbished Edwardian Terrace - Basement unit - Super happy housemates. Always up for fun and laughs and going out and even sharing meals. - WiFi access -Phone plan with free overseas phone calls to landline - Sharing with 6 others - Quaint, but needs some work

What they really mean is... - Pack heat. Shit gets stabby out here. - We tiled the space under the stairs and put a tap in there. - Technically a double bed would fit in there. But not a single atom more. - I'm a psychotic, anal, control freak. You so much as sneeze on a surface and I'll fucking cut you. - Many people vomit/fuck/piss in out lounge room. - Oh by fuck, it's tiny! - You can walk to the tube if you want but you run a high risk of being shot/mugged/raped. - Our unwashed dishes support a family of mice. - Cats. Lots of cats. - Skinny, falling-apart shack. - Subterranean dungeon of the damned. - You'll want to extract our eyes with a fork shortly after moving in. - Dumbass upstairs door has unsecured connection - Fat homesick girl won't get off the fucking phone. - Your shower day is: Tuesday - Do you have any matches?

The list could go on... In fact, we could make this a definitive list... Anyone got any more to add?


PS: Next post will be the meme The Girl tagged me in... Promise!

Why I Hate Harrods.

Before I came to London I was of the impression that Harrod's was a noble place. A place where the rich went to buy opulent and luxurious goods. A place where the social elite congregated to purchase their truffles, their perfumes, their spices and their caviar. A place where you had high tea and drank champagne at the oyster bar.

Whilst the amazing fresh fruit and vegetable displays rotted on their shelves, Britons were busy fighting over the last pack of fish fingers in the frozen food section.

It's nothing like that though. Well it probably is, but you have to get inside. Which isn't usually an option due to the throng of idiots that surround it constantly.
On a Saturday, if you're European, consider yourself to be wealthy and have the the worst fashion sense this side of the Eastern Bloc then for some reason you'll find yourself walking around out the front of Harrod's. There's no explaining it, it just happens. You may not want to be there, but on a Friday night someone inside the big domed tower overlooking Brompton Road flips a switch that turns on a special bad taste magnet which is so strong that if you live anywhere from Germany to Italy to Portugal and have one single item in your wardrobe that is embroidered, is glittery or has rhinestones on it, you'll wake up on Saturday morning some time and realise you're wearing your embroided/glittery/rhinestoned clothes and are blocking the footpath out the front of Harrods.
It's probably not your fault, but by god do you bunch of retards piss me off when I'm having to pass through that area.
Seriously, what the hell is with people who can't get from one point to another without doing any of the following:
1) Drifting.
Drifting is when you walk along the footpath and ever so slowly deviate from your initial course and begin walking diagonally across the footpath, cutting off everyone behind/beside you. Whenever someone attempts to pass you on the otherside, you then counter-drift in front of them. This is usually when you'll feel a sharp blow to the back of your head, courtesy of me.
2) Stopping.
This enrages me so much. People who walk along, then suddenly decide that the best time to stop dead in their tracks and reach around in their pockets to find their rhinestone encrusted Nokia is whilst they are on the busiest footpath ever. If you do this, know that I will probably cut you.
3) The Flying V
Yes, like on The Mighty Ducks. This is when there's a bunch of people walking shoulder to shoulder and taking up the entire footpath so anyone walking in the opposite direction is forced to edge between them, walk onto the road to avoid them or just turn around a walk back the other way. For fuck's sake you people, the footpath is wide enough to accommodate maybe four people, there's eight of you. It's not going to work. Go single file you assholes and stop making everyone else walk around you. Often this is a family. I still hate them. Children are not an excuse.
4) God-ing it.
This is when you believe that you are a supreme being that can walk through crowds without having to ever move for anyone else. You think the crowds will part, just so you can get to the luxury optics aisle to find a tinted lense for your Prada monocle.

Anyways....

I hate going anywhere near Harrods.
If it's not the European fashion victims clogging the footpaths, it's the Japanese tour groups.
And then you've got the protestors picketing against Harrods because they use fur in some of their items.
Fuck off with your posters of skinned dogs. I don't care if Harrods has a tiny zoo full of animals it slaughters nightly to create fur lined chihuahua carriers. Yes it's bad that these animals get treated so badly, but if I've pushed through 10,000 people to get to Harrods, I'm not going to turn around just because you're giving me a fucking pamphlet.

Wow, does this rant ever stop!?

Well yes it does.
Sometimes all it takes is one little moment to make it all worthwhile.
Today, that moment was a dick joke.
On the tube, I was nearing Knightsbridge, preparing myself for the impending battle through the Harrods crowds.
As the train was about to pull out of South Kensington the standard announcement rang out.
"Stand clear of the doors. Mind the closing doors. This is a Piccadilly line train stopping all stations to Cock..."
For some reason the message cut out and so the train's destination changed from Cockfosters, to somewhere arguably less savoury.
This was enough to make me giggle, because I'm basically a 4 year old. But the best part was just down the carriage from me there was a man and his son. The son was about 8.
When the announcement was made, the little kid threw his hand over his mouth and began laughing. He looked up guiltily at his dad who smirked, ruffled the kid's hair and laughed as well.

Yep, dick jokes bring people together.
It's badly dressed Europeans out the front of Harrods that tears them apart.

Jeebus is sick of your prayers.

Yep, my boss is into Jeebus.
She uses the company gear and staff to print off the weekly church bulletin.
Which means we get to read it... And oh what fun it is.

Now a brief bit of background.
I'm not into Jeebus.
I'm not into someone else instead, I don't know that there is an omniscient presence that sees over us and I don't know if I believe in any kind of theism.
At the moment, I'm pretty happy in making my own decisions on all things existential and I don't need a god or a text to define my morals, thank you very much. I'd say my self-defined set of values and morals are pretty good. I'm not a philanderer, I may be slightly greedy, I do get jealous from time to time, but I'm not harming anyone. I think Buddhism would be the closest an organised religion would come to representing my interests. Although I'm probably a tad too militant to be a Buddhist.
Come to think of it, science is the best option when it comes to explaining my world.
And I'm happy for you to believe in whatever it is you choose to, just don't try to recruit me for any of your nonsense.
Anyways...
So the boss uses work for Jeebus tasks.
And whilst folding the Jeebus pamphlets, we have a read of what's happening in the church.

Friday: Pray that Mr Johansson will find help with his current difficulties.
Nice one. Single out the bankrupt guy for prayers. I'm sure that's what he needs because his overdraft mainly consists of hopes and dreams, so surely enough prayers should be worth something, right? That makes the church like a giant ATM. Cha-ching!

Saturday: Pray that the Youth Group has more people return to hear about the Lord's word.
Wait, what? You're praying for more people to come and learn how to pray? This is getting a bit too 'meta' for me. And tell your damn godsquad teens to leave me alone. I don't want your brochure and your hymns are old and shitty.

Sunday: May we pray that Pastor O'Brady's sermon reaches out to those who need it the most.
Again with the praying about praying. Since when did prayers become so self serving? Oh what? Always? Ok... Amen!

Monday: Pray that the children have enjoy themselves at playgroup and that The Lord may reach out to all of them.
Ok, that's a no no. No touching the children. Even if you are a deity. Also, don't kids do this anyways? I didn't go to church playgroup, but by hell did I have some fun in the heathen sandpits.

Tuesday: Let us pray that Sanyan Patang's chemotherapy is effective and that his family are looked over during this testing time.
Sounds like Mr Patang's been a-sinning! Ok, that's just poor taste, but seriously praying for science? Isn't that like the old cliche of fucking for virginity? Or eating for famine? Or fighting for peace? Granted it's nice they're supporting the family during a rough time, but praying for the chemotherapy to be effective? I imagine the people of the church stood around Mr Patang's hospital bed, holding their hands over him going "Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow"
all psychic like.
You could call it Pray-diotherapy if you like. But I don't think it would help...
Maybe I'm just a pessimist.

And so the list of prayer targets went on.
This got me thinking that isn't it a bit selfish for this people to be praying over such minor things.?
And if you were Jeebus, or God or whichever one it is, wouldn't you be a bit pissed with people telling you about this stuff all the time.
It's be like being in high school again and having your mum constantly asking "Have you done your homework yet?"
No, but I'm about to, give me a chance dammit.
Likewise, Jeebus probably WAS going to help out Mr Patang, but you lot have been so damn annoying, asking him to do things every five minutes that Jeebus has cracked it and decided Mr Patang can sort himself out.
This goes for all of the suggested prayers. Praying for the children to enjoy playgroup? If I was Jeebus, I'd be like "Seriously you guys, fuck off. The kids can enjoy things themselves just fine. What you want me to do? Apparate or some shit? Is that what you want? You want me to apparate and do some baloon animals or something? Sheesh. Go find some real conundrums, ass-hats."

"Did you want a balloon animal or not? Now what's wrong? Oh your scalp is burning? Well go tell mummy to stop praying cos she's PISSING OF JESUS!!! God I hate kids... Hey, you there! What the fuck are those flowers for? Are they dandelions? God I hate dandelions..."

I do find the whole prayer thing to be very self-centred. I mean, shit, you want something? Why not work for it like everyone else. Stop being a slack ass and do the hard yards. Stop asking for money to come your way. Don't pray that life will get easier. No one likes a pussy. Especially one that spends their time praying that Jeebus will make everyone stop calling them Monobrow Mary. Here's a tip. If you want a deity that will fix that problem, screw Jeebus, go get a Venus and shave your damn eyebrow lady.

I think if everyone who spent time praying did something actually worthwhile instead, a shitload more good things would get done. Think about that next time you're kneeling in front of your bed. Instead of sitting there, hands clasped asking god to help you pass your mid semester exams, why don't you get out a fucking text book and do some actual reading.

If I never post again, know that God came under the cover of darkness and stole my soul away.

So today was a day of rage*, blaspheme and generally unwholesome outbursts. Probably not to be repeated, so if I've offended you**, do come back cos it's likely my other posts won't be so offensive. Probably.

* Regarding today's ...errr... outburst. I realised when i got home tonight that I hadn't eaten any lunch. And when I don't eat, I get super grumpy.
So if I had eaten lunch, I probably wouldn't have had such a tantrum this afternoon.
Rage and Biscuits is a bit of a misnomer now I think about it. If I have biscuits or any food for that matter, I don't get grumpy/rage-y... Maybe I should call this Rage or Biscuits.
Meh...

**This post is all in jest, so please God, don't let anyone be offended by it. Kthxbai.

My colleagues, on Australia:

You know when sometimes you're roped into something so absurd that it angers you because now you're implicated in a conversation that will go down as being one of the single most retarded things of all time?

Female Coworker1 (FCW1): Oh, I vomited once when I was underwater.

Female Coworker2 (FCW2): Oooh, gross! How?

FCW1: Well I was over in Australia (gesturing across the room towards me, because apparently, I'm Australia in it's entirety) and I was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and we'd had too much to drink the night before and I had the urge to throw up, so i pulled my snorkel out and vomited in the water.

FCW2: Oh that's disguting.

FCW1: Yeah i know, and then all the fish came up and were just eating it like 'chomp chomp chomp'. (Making chomping gestures with hand in front of her face)

FCW2: (Even more alarmed) Ewwww!

FCW1: Yeah they were like those little silver fish... (Pauses, shouts at me) Hey Jiminy, you know those silver fish that they have over there?(Placing hands about 30 cm apart which I assume serves to indicate the approximate size of the fish.)

Me: They have silver fish everywhere, FCW1.

Trying to identify a specific type of fish with 'silver' being the only descriptor is like trying to find a restaurant in India with 'unhygenic' as your sole clue. And no 'sole' wasn't intended as a fish pun. But it can be now I noticed it.

FCW1: Yeah, but you know the ones in Australia that swim around and then they'll be under a jetty in the shade?

Me: (Incredulously) Are you serious? It could have been a million types of fish. I mean, nearly all fish are silver and I don't know what fish you saw under a jetty. I have no idea what you're talking about.

FCW1: Oh well... (Then to FCW2) Yeah, well anyway., these fish were just swarming around eating all the vomit. It was crazy! (Doing 'swimming fish' AND chomping gestures with hands)


Oh. My. God.