Working with me is fun

This is a conversation I had on Thursday with a friend who has recently announced her resignation from that place where I work

I should mention that this followed an earlier and quite bizarre conversation with the office manager which ended with me writing my name on a post–it note and telling everyone I was going to stick it on one of the spare muffins out the back.

The later conversation went something like this...


INC: I have worked out what’s going to happen when I finally lose it. I’m going to stick post-it notes on everything in the entire office.


Workmate: What the hell are you talking about?


INC: I am going to claim, not just that muffin, but absolutely everything in the entire office. Everything.


Increasing bemused workmate: That’s great. Can you make sure that you do that before I leave?


INC: Yes. Yes I will. You’ll come in one morning and the receptionists will have notes stuck to their heads


Now quite freaked workmate: Well, um, I hope you’re feeling better tomorrow.


INC: My tip? Wear a hat. Goodnight!



When I told Honey Bear about that conversation, she pointed out that, if I was going to be claiming everything including accessories, I should first ensure that my workmate was wearing a hat that Honey Bear would like. Ooh, and black knee length boots. In size six.



If I had needed further proof that I married the right woman, that would have been, like, so totally it.

The unbearable randomness of thinking

A few things I’ve been wondering about:

1. Were spelling bees invented by a bitter parent who decided that if he had to spell everything for years on end in the manner of “Do you think the children would like a m-i-l-k-s-h-a-k-e?” etc, then the children should have to do the same thing except even more pointlessly?


2. Personally, I think that guy went a bit too far. It’s not like parents ever have to ask “should we buy them a m-n-e-m-o-n-i-c?”


3. There is little doubt that Katie Holmes fell on her head shortly before ringing her agent and saying “Hey, I just read the script for ‘First Daughter’, let’s do this”, but how many storeys up was that window exactly?


4. Why did no-one tell me that the Gilmore Girls were back on? Seriously, why?


5. There is a comic genius somewhere in the promotional department at Channel 10. Yes, I refer to whoever advertised the “Premi-arrrh” of “Pirate Master”. Why on earth does this person not have his/her own show. And could we put this show on, say, every evening at 7.00pm?


6. Did that real estate agent really think anyone would be convinced by an advertisement headed “Weatherboard excitement”? Have these words ever been used together before? Ever?


7. We all know about the dangers of athlete’s foot. But what about the equally scary prospect of mathlete’s foot? If untreated, your foot will actually turn into 30.48cm.

8. I am utterly addicted to ‘What About Brian’. How did this happen? Should I have noticed?


9. I also enjoyed “The Illusionist.” Is this some weird former cast member of 7th Heaven obsession? I doubt it, since I hated that show and I didn’t make it through “Summer Catch” even though I was stuck in a motel room in Shepparton with nothing but legal papers and cheap cookies for company. Well, that’s a relief.



The inside of my head is not a quiet place.

Hey, why not post something about cars?

I was talking to a friend who is slightly older than me about one of his first cars. I now have a whole new appreciation for late '60s Fords, mostly because of the following features:

1. This dude painted his car himself. With a paintbrush. Outside. On a windy day. I'm told the effect was reasonably 'textured'. One so rarely sees that any more. In fairness, he used 'real automotive paint'.


2. The fuel line ran accross the top of the engine. This is a great design feature if one is driving around Sheffield or Manchester in the middle of winter, as the heat from the engine stops the fuel line from freezing. This is a deeply stupid design feature if one wants to drive around Melbourne in summer. It's even worse if one is stuck in a line of cars waiting to get into, say, the local drive-in. That establishment was more accurately described as the 'push-in', because that was the only way to get the car in there without blowing it up.

3. The relays on the electric fuel pump had a tendency to jam. This could be fixed by the simple means of the guy in the passenger seat taking off one show, leaning out the window and thumping the fuel pump with the shoe until it started working.

4. This car had TWO HORNS. One for the driver to, you know, warn other vehicles of an impending crash or some such. The other was on the passenger side, and was there solely to enable the passenger to hoot at attractive women.


I found number 4 particularly hilarious. Someone asked me if I was considering a similar modification to my car, but I declined on the basis that Honey Bear is not much inclined to hooting at attractive women when we're out 'cruising'. Someone else then pointed out that I really should install two additional horns, one on each side of the back seat, as Bundle and Cherub would think that was awesome.

I won't be doing that.

It's bad enough that their carseats have drink holders. I have to draw the line somewhere.

I still don’t know how to pronounce ‘meme’

Thanks to Giggles for the tag to do this little meme involving a list of six weird things about myself. Only six, I ask rhetorically? Yes, only six. The hard part here was narrowing it down from the short list of, like, a billion. Here’s what I ended up with.

1. I order food based solely on curiosity

It doesn’t matter how much I may want a nice, safe laksa or that peanutty chicken with coconut rice thing that the China Bar do so well, if I notice shredded fish or duck pie on the menu that is what I am going to order. I just want to know. I’m not sure that I end up with better food, but I will never die wondering. And this is why I know what durian ice-cream and pork floss buns taste like.

When I asked Honey Bear to list weird things about me, this is the first one she came up with too.

2. I know a little too much about truly trashy music

I realised this when I figured out that one of the cast members of that ‘Primeaval’ show was a former member of S Club 7, not because I recognised her, but because I recognised her name in the credits. Yes, that’s right, I knew and instantly recognized THE SURNAME OF A MEMBER OF S CLUB 7. Uh-oh.

3. I’m occasionally surprised by my own enthusiasm

A couple of days ago I was thinking about the “Chinese Beef”* I was going to cook that night when I remembered that we now have a wonderfully large Scanpan (thanks again, Watershedd) with a wide, flat base that is absolutely perfect for pan-frying the beef and even I was surprised at just how excited I suddenly felt about the prospect of cooking dinner.

4. I actually want to know why Lacey Chabert was in Mean Girls

After watching this movie (why?) and realizing that Lacey was in it, I started to wonder if she initially auditioned for Lindsay Lohan’s character who grew up being home schooled in Africa, on the basis that Lacey previous did the voice for Eliza in “The Wild Thornberrys”, the key point being that Eliza grew up being home schooled in Africa.

My theory is that having lost out to Lindsay for the lead role, Lacey was offered the lesser but still major part of Gretchen. The weird part is that it is going to bug me endlessly that I am never going to know whether I am right about that

5. I like spending five cent pieces

Five cent pieces are stupid. When I get one I want to throw it away immediately. I don’t carry them around because to carry enough of them to actually buy anything requires a wheelbarrow of some sort. The flip side to this is when I actually gather enough of them in one place to buy, say, a donut, it’s the equivalent of getting it for free.

6. I sound like Ray Romano when I have a cold
At least, I hope that’s why my hairdresser**** told me that I sound like that guy from Everybody Loves Raymond. I have some serious thinking to do if that is not the reason.

For the record, he also told me that my hair is ‘stubborn’ and ‘surprising’. I have no idea what to make of all this.


And so to the tagging part we all love so well. Are there six people reading this who have not been tagged already? I’m going to go with, Adam, Aussie Rock Chick (perhaps you two could each tell us six weird things about the other?), Harpo, Sharpatootha, Leilani and Mizanthrop.

If you want to.




*It’s not really Chinese. It will however be useful if I am ever in Beijing and I need to know how the locals say “Dude wtf?”**

** Yes, I put it in quotation marks and added a footnote. It’s that un-Chinese. Seriously, the marinade has dry sherry in it.***

*** Besides, I am doing this meme at Gigglewick’s request, and it just seems appropriate to host a festival of the footnote

**** and by ‘my hairdresser’ I mean whichever dude happened to be free when I walked into to the local ‘no appointment necessary and we’re inexpensive’ hair cutting establishment, not someone I actually know or regularly deal with or anything. Does anyone know anywhere I can get a decent haircut for under $20 is the actual question here.

Something to celebrate

It is exactly six years today since my status as luckiest guy in the universe was officially recognized and celebrated with, amongst other things, a very pleasant ceremony followed by dancing and cake.

I could post endlessly about how incredibly happy my Honey Bear has made me day after day throughout our very lovely marriage, but now, as on the night, I lack the words to express just how good it is. Instead, let me repeat the lines I stole from William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” to use as the conclusion of my speech at the reception:

Silence is the most perfect herald of joy,
And I were but a little happy if I could say how much.

Which says it all, really.


Happy anniversary, Honey Bear. I love you truly, passionately and endlessly.

Enough about me, let’s talk about you what do you think of me

Much as I love the blogging, there are days when knowing almost no-one who comments here in real life seems a bit limiting. Frankly, there’s so much more I want to know about absolutely every one of you.

In addition to questions like “If you read this and you’ve never commented, who are you?” or “Now that I have promised to stop going on about a particular teapot-obsessed atheist, what should I write about next?”, or even “If on the off chance one of you is actually Paul Keating, what chemical imbalance in your brain made you think this was a good time to start criticizing the deputy leader of your own party?”, the questions that I find myself coming back to most seem to revolve around the names people choose to go by whilst blogging.

I’m sure there was a better way to structure that sentence, but let’s move on.

I find myself asking questions like:

Does Melbourne Girl really have a brother called Melbourne Guy? Does that ever get confusing, initial-wise?

I eventually figured out where the name Actonb comes from, but why Acton specifically?

At what age did Grizzlewick Gigglewick Fix acquire his online name? And what is he going to say about it when he learns to read/google?

It’s not too hard to work out where the name “Aussie Rock Chick” came from, but which band is she in DON’T ANSWER THAT ONE IT’S A SECRET?

Does Harpo really look like his profile photo, or did he pick up that name because he doesn’t talk much and his brother has an unconvincingly over-the-top Italian accent?

Why would someone who seems to quite like people call herself Mizanthrop?

Do those who use their real names when blogging find that that’s working out well for them? If Adam or Kate (nee Herbert) still read this, I might get an answer.

And I could keep going for a really long time, but you get the idea.

For those who wonder why I apparently feel compelled to tell the world that whoever I may actually be, Craig I am clearly not, there is an explanation, of sorts, right about here. So, dear readers, why did you choose the identities by which the rest of us now know you? I really want to know. So, please let me know where on your own blog you have already answered that question, or put it in a new post and then tell me that you did, or leave your answers in the comments section, or email me, or whatever. Thank you for indulging my curiosity, and do have yourselves a fabulous weekend.

Mere mail

Dear Barney Zwartz

Hi, interesting little blog you have there. I don’t think that you are necessarily helping raise the tone of the conversation by including a parody of Richard Dawkins within the first week, but hopefully things will improve from here.

More importantly, I just thought you should know that I was blogging about Richard Dawkins long before it was the cool new thing.

You owe me money.

Yours sincerely,

INC



Dear people who actually read this blog,

I promise to shut up about Richard Dawkins for a while.

And I love you all.

INC