Urban peculiarities

 Shoe tossing

What the hell is this about? I see it all the time, a pair of sneakers or boots (generally) over the power lines in suburbs around the place. The weird thing is, although I have seen a million of them, I have never ever seen anybody standing underneath throwing them up there. Is it a night-time thing? Do people drop them out of helicopters? Does it mean there is a crack house nearby? (one of the explanations I’ve been told) and it’s not like you can get them back and how expensive if it becomes a habit? One day I saw a row of Connies of assorted colours suspended along a power line like bats on a line. What a waste of good Connies. Anyway, apparently this shoe flinging manoeuvre has a proper name … ’Shoefiti’. I have heard in urban areas the sneaker is used and in rural areas its work boots, but it doesn’t matter, as long as they have laces and can be heaved up as a sort of bolas. I have also heard that it is a bullying turf war thing and done in the old days for the dead. Whatever it is, it’s weird … and who gets them all down? It’s like upside down littering.

Planking  

Fad. The thing I love about the fad is, they pass. And wasn’t planking fucking insane not to mention potentially deadly. I get that the fun part is to find the most bizarre and atypical place to lie stiffly face down but on the thin balcony rail of an apartment 14 stories high on the Gold coast is ludicrous. I’m so blaming social media for it going viral. It’s perfect for showing off but can encourage death and disaster. Thanks Mr Tom Green for this innovative creation. I will admit though that some planking photos were pretty funny but I’m happy those days are over. I’m glad we moved on to variations like Owling and tea potting, parkour and also Gangnam style…now there’s a groovy fad from neologist Psy! Nothing like a bit of viral K pop that’s best claim to fame is beating Justin Biebers You tube video for ‘Baby’. Still, I find it a little outlandish and decidedly odd ball.

A bee in my bonnet

 I have a bee in my bonnet about what we should and shouldn't pay for these days, cause maybe we’re already paying in other ways …

I resent it a little when we are asked to pay 20 cents for wasabi when we buy sushi rolls at our local sushi shop. The soy sauce comes free, and they usually chuck five of those little suckers in, but you have to pay for a minute envelope of wasabi. Wasabi … it goes with sushi. Like salt goes with pepper. To me this is like ordering a ham and salad roll without the top of the roll or a piece of fish without the chips. They belong together, they just do. What’s it all about this extra charge? Will they start charging for straws when we buy a drink? Tomato sauce is another condiment we are often asked to shell out extra for with a pasty or a pie. Again, they belong together. Don’t fucking charge me for it. In South Australia they don’t charge you for sauce, or bread rolls at dinner (but we’ll get to them later). They have a couple of sauce bottles behind the pie warmer and when you say yes to sauce, they push the spout in and it distributes through that pasty or pie beautifully. That friggin' plastic sachet of tomato sauce is completely pointless on top of a pie or pasty and you can’t dip. It’s not the done way and the packaging is far too small to accommodate it.

We should not have to pay extra for a dinner roll at dinner. The bread roll with a meal comes free when you eat out in Adelaide. In other cities you pay for it. Often up to two dollars. They might not have Sizzler there anymore, but they have free dinner rolls.

The sneaky charge. I have found this previously with regards to water in restaurants. Mostly when dining out when we ask for water, it comes free in a water bottle with glasses. But sometimes there’s a sneaky charge and it arrives in plastic still water bottles pre opened or worse in Perrier bottles with bubbles and there is a charge. A large charge. I don’t mind paying for a Perrier but ask me if that’s what I want, don’t take the piss.

I loathe having to pay for parking at local markets and/or to pay an entry fee. I want to save my money for the vendors. I want to give my money to them for their wares and encourage them to make more wares and feel loved and supported by their community. I don’t want to pay Brisbane City Council for the right to park my car at a venue that I can support small business owners at. I hate that. In fact, in all honesty I hate paying for parking at all in fact. First in first served is my motto. Maybe charge people if they stay too long but there should be no need to pay upfront. Get over yourselves. Paying for parking in Brisbane is fucking unbelievably extravagant. Sometimes it’s a choice between educating my daughter and parking. And apparently dearest in the world. How do they justify this? I usually take the train … and hell hasn't that gone up. Public transport costs! It’s perverse.

Road tolls. A bell tolls and that’s the only toll we should ever know. We already pay for roads. We pay taxes and rates. We do not have a say in whether, where or why new roads and tunnels are built. Either you have the money to build it Main Roads or you don’t, or you save for it. Like we save for a holiday. Brisbane just does it because they fucked up all their roads by just dropping them from a great height and expecting drivers to make some sense of them … then they need more cause they neglected to count the population properly. Perhaps fuck off the abacus.

When using the toilet in Europe there can be a fee. My poor travel buddy in Salzburg had the runs and was busting while we scrounged for a few groschen (at the time) to put in the door so she could get in. You pay for ablutions. We also had to pay for a square of toilet paper in Hong Kong (delivered by hand). I found this odd. Toileting should be free. It’s an everyday, necessary task.

I do want to state for the record that I am not penny-pinching, tight, mean, miserable or stingy about money. I give money to charities, buskers, and homeless people. I just feel that things have gone a bit far and that some things should just be part of the service. It’s simply good manners.

How fucking annoying

 Band aids

This is what I find extremely annoying. Band-Aid comments. I guarantee, except for Nelly cause who gives a shit why he wears one on his face, put a Band-Aid anywhere on your person, and people will ask you about it. Now Band-Aid’s have been around since 1921 when some guy named Earle was concerned about his wife cutting her fingers while cooking him dishes in the kitchen and made the first one (later his boss, James Johnson ripped off the idea, made him VP and made Johnson & Johnson a lot of fucking money), true story but I digress. Try this tomorrow. Put a Band-Aid on your finger, your hand, neck ... anywhere visible and you will have at least 14 comments about it. Why do people care?

‘What’d ya do to yourself? Knife slip?’… huge guffaw.

‘What happened? Cut yourself?’

’Nah, just love wearing Band-Aid’s, fuck head!’

People don’t even care why really. They just want to ask. I reckon it’s the attention factor we got as kids, brandishing a Band-Aid on a scraped knee during some sort of incredible kiddy adventure. After the tears and mercurochrome, it was a statement of valour. Every kid was secretly envious of that band-aided knee, finger, chin … it was the mark of a champion and a story to tell. But when you’re 53 and you have a skin tag that’s catching on a seat belt, and you have a small round Band-Aid on it-nobody needs to know about it.

 

Don’t touch me there

How annoying is this when you are pregnant? Strangers touching your tummy and believing whole heartedly that it’s ok to do so. You’d be strangers on a train if you were not sporting a small bump filled with baby. It happened often to me in a supermarket, at the football once, on the street, in the post office. ‘Ask me first mother fucker, I don’t know you, but I might say yes’. When did I become public property? I can’t imagine going up to anyone not pregnant, that I didn’t know and touching them on the tummy, and saying ‘Hmmm, just imagining if you were pregnant’. It is not cool. I realised though that if I kept my hand on my stomach, they wouldn’t be so quick to reach out, no-one wants to touch your hand or any other part of you, cause that makes you real, although on one occasion a lady at Woollies in the confectionery aisle, slipped her hand next to mine anyway. I wanted to say to her, ‘you know I’m here too, don’t you? That belly you’re touching is part of me, right?’ I swear she would have had the shock of her life…it talks! Fucking annoying.

Senseless technology

Annoying much? I was at a service station café halfway up the Sunshine coast and stopped to get my five-year-old a small milk shake.

‘Can’t do a small one’, the idiot said.

‘Why not? Just use a small coffee cup,’ I said noticing the large milk shake cups.

‘Nup, no button for a small milk shake on the cash register.’

‘Are you kidding? You have three different coffee sizes and you can’t do a small milk shake for a kid?’

‘Nup, no button for a small milk shake on the cash register.’

*Stare in an unbelievably disturbed fashion for a while*

‘I’ll just pay for the large size then…but can you put it in a small coffee cup please.’

‘Mmm not sure.’

‘Right so you’re saying that my child can’t have a milk shake in a small cup because the stupid cash register doesn’t have the right button, that my choice is being controlled by a missing button? ARE YOU SHITTING ME?’

Lunch

People in my office are over interested in other people’s lunches or food in general. I find that very annoying. Well particularly when they are interested in my lunch. Now I get the whole lunch envy thing. Especially when I am looking down the barrel (or staring disinterestedly at my plate) of a salad comprised of a tomato, iceberg lettuce leaf, a dash of balsamic and 3 pieces of cucumber. I smell the lasagne’s, the Thai curries and the cheese toasties and I have lunch envy. I do. But I don’t get up in someone’s face about their dish and prod at it with the tip of my index finger.

‘Mmmm looks great. You make that?’

I don’t stoop over a plate of steaming delights taking in an audible whiff, possibly dropping possible hairs into it and say, ‘yum what’s that? That’s a lot of calories’ … like they do.

‘Yuk, what’s that?’ I want to say pointing in their face.

I had a bowl of muesli this morning and put some goji berries in it ... well didn’t that start a conversation.

‘Oh, what’s that?’

‘Muesli.’

‘No, the red things?’

‘Goji berries?’

‘Really? Goji berries.’

Fascination and then ... she did it ... she poked one ... what the actual fuck? It’s not a slug, or part of an unidentified bug species that may bite or retaliate in some freaky fashion ... it’s a BERRY and it’s MY BREAKFAST!!! It’s annoying.

Dickheads

 Do not eat that

‘Do not eat.’ They are tiny desiccant sachets we find in the bottom of vitamin and pill bottles and in a packet of wraps. They are a harmless absorbent moisture and odour sponges, necessary to cope with the shipping and atmospheric conditions and changes in temp that could cause moisture to ruin the pill quality, for example. I for one am glad they put, ‘do not eat’ on the packet because who knows what might happen … I may eat it. Doesn’t look like my vitamin but hell, it’s in there … must be edible, and you know why they put ‘do not eat’ on it? It’s because of the dick heads who eat it, and they’re the ones walking around the world with a bad case of dry mouth, their puffy tongues lolling ridiculously between their parched lips.

FB

With Facebook (Failbook, Faceache, Bookface, Stalkerbook) we are subject to all sorts of super fascinating little stories and photos from others. There are pictures of people's rissole and mash dinners, surprise bunches of flowers from a partner, a nice pic of Nana bowling Freddy out in cricket (sepia for that one – with frame). Both cute and sad animal pictures of small white baby animals being kicked across a football field and then there are the check ins from the gym or a bar in a cool part of town (and I am the check in queen so am definitely not knocking the ‘check in’). Declarations of love for Jesus, the braggy kids posts, hate for Trump (because he is a cockhead, let’s face it), pro-gay marriage slogans, pops humour, boasts of accomplishments people pin to show off and get validated by fb friends and strangers they've never met but play Candy Crush with. Then we get bloody really, ordinary posts like, ‘that moment when’ or worse ‘that awkward moment when …’ shut up dick head! People, get an original thought. You can even join these groups if they want to share their really awkward moments in life. ‘That awkward moment when Santa and I have the same wrapping paper’… oh yes, that is awkward. ‘That awkward moment when you slept with your neighbour and then accidentally told your wife.’  Facebook brings us all the dick heads of the world we didn’t realise existed before FB.

PNP’s

Personalised number plates! And unbelievably stupid, personalised number plates that state what the make of the car is, for example, BMW-007… there are BMW badges on the car asshole, no one needs an explanation, no one cares! Why would you do this? You’re some wanker that needs to point this out. I almost (barely) understand why personalised number plates can be cutesy or mildly amusing when you’re 17, and they may even possibly be clever to some degree (a really, really, small degree) but JAG-975 or MERC-05 is stupid! Your name? Is stupid. I mean you can put whatever you want on those suckers, pretty much but it simply makes you a dick. A really, small dick.

Mutton dressed as lamb

There is nothing more tragic than a bitch who wears lippy above her lip. This is where they got the phrase ‘mutton dressed as lamb.’ It also includes the wearing of leopard skin or other animal print, fur coats, collagen lips and visible 'g' strings of anyone over 55 … stop it! I know it’s an offensive title, referring to an older lady dressing like a much younger one … but deliberately trying to deceive when you’re not in the race is just catastrophic. Men too, can be mutton dressed as ram, it’s depicted by a Lamborghini and gold jewellery, fake tans, gold sluggers (budgie smugglers, dick bathers), teenage blonde girlfriends and spray on hair … what the hell?

Bug bear

Often when I’m on a call to an insurer, or bank or Medicare for example, I often hear on the other end of the phone (when speaking to a real person), ‘bear with me’, not just once but every time their computer screen freezes or they have to go and ask a supervisor something (rubbish, they’re going out for a smoke), or they blink. I spoke to one fellow on the phone recently who while very helpful, did my head absolutely in because he said it every few seconds ‘bear with me’, ‘bear with me’, ‘bear with me’. Sometimes he mixed it up by adding words like 'Just bear with me' or 'bear with me please'. Did he not realise he was saying it? Did he not know what else to say? Was he panicking? Is he a dick? 'Ssshhuuuush', I wanted to yell, - 'stop saying that, it’s stupid’. I know it’s a polite way of saying be patient with me while I fix up your stuff but say it once, not every three seconds. Got it the first time, dick!

Acro is not a dirty word

Acronym conversations are run-of-the-mill for public servants, and in all honesty, I’m kinda taken aback when people from outside government stop us mid conversation and ask what it all means … God where do we start? Occasionally (a lot) … we don’t even know what the words to the acronym are, but we know what they mean … for example, I was a SATO from the SAT team who worked with DS. My role includes doing TLR’s, COFP’s, meeting with NGO’s, sorting through YLYC and funding rounds for S4SL. We use BIS to record ICAPS and ONI’s and approach HACCQCC on a regular basis. If HACCQCC can’t assist there is always CCRC and ERF-FSG. We assist with MASS, CAEATI, VOSS and CLI and at the end of the day after all is said and done … we are just dicks without words.

Bananas in Pyjamas

There’s just no excuse for this kind of dick.  Daddy pig runs a close second.

Cyclists

 Tight arse, fat gut and a coffee shop stop at 6am. These are the midlife crisis boys on bikes. The whole cycling apparel includes mandatory helmet of course with weird shit sticking out of the top to deter birds from chipping away at their growing hairy ear cartilage, I think. BioRacer firm bike pants, closer shaved legs than me, in fact nicer toned legs than many of us, windbreaker gloves, jerseys in a variety of fluro, the ability to balance without putting a foot on terra firma at traffic lights and attitude.

My partner always wants to open the car door when we pass a crew of them riding across seven lanes, rather than single file as they should, because they get in the fucking way and put the rest of us in danger ... or so I hear regularly. I usually defended them because in all honesty that didn’t annoy me as much as drivers who brake before they indicate.

But then I had an argument with one of them at Southbank once. There was a hoard of highly prized and very probably exceedingly expensive bikes parked outside of Chez Laila cafe while a group of cycling fanatics took up seventeen tables one Sunday morning early. I was there early with my baby in a pram because she woke at 4.30am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. So, there I was bleary eyed enjoying the morning sun and wander along the river, when bam, straight into a Merida Scultura carbon road bike. Before I could say ‘shit, who put that bloody bike in the path of my pram endangering my infant’s life?’ a cyclist dude jumped up swiftly, slopping his latte with skim onto his raisin toast, (no butter) and came at me. I stupidly assumed he was about to apologise when out of his mouth came an onslaught of abuse about me hitting his precious Merida Sculture carbon (how I knew the name). There was some statement about watching where I was going and finally, ‘do you know how much this bike is worth? It’s a $8,000 bike for God’s sake?’

‘Really? well, my baby cost around that through IVF and this is a Bugaboo Chameleon with accessories mate. That makes my cargo worth $9,000 and take that ridiculous hat off dipshit, who wears a helmet at breakfast. What could happen?’.

It was actually an Emmaljunga and second hand, but how was he to know? The point is, there was no room because of the bikes and there was no ‘clean in body, clean in heart’ mentality going on at all there. They tell motorists to be cautious, be courteous and have a better cyclist mentality but mind-set like that makes it pretty fucking hard. I know it could have been just one guy but not one other bike man stood up to defend me. They were all glancing at their own bikes with that look on their face like, ‘thank God it wasn’t mine’. I took a backward glance when I was farther away to see the rude dude squatting with another cyclist to check out the damage ... of which I’m sure there was none except when I ‘felt abashed at the extravagant praise’ – NOT.

Little weirdos

Honestly, what the fuck is going on with the jockey? That strange little man with the weird helium voice and the coloured silk shirts. Seen a naked jockey? No hair ... none. Hairless like those Sphynx cats but much, much weirder. They are less built than my five-year-old daughter. When I hear a jockey interviewed, I freak out because I think it’s a fucked-up Muppet. They are Oompah Loompahs with money. They are the basis for the Randy Newman song, ‘Short People.’

‘They got little hands

Little eyes

They walk around

Tellin' great big lies

They got little noses

And tiny little teeth

They wear platform shoes

On their nasty little feet ‘... sing it!

See what I’m saying?

These people have to sit in booster seats at restaurants and they smack their pixie faces into the ground when they sneeze. I asked one at Dooley’s Irish bar once where his pot of gold was ... and never heard his soprano reply. Even the name of the jockey attire is weird. Toque (the hat), lunettes (no idea), casaque (the shirt), breeches aka pantaloons (or just pants in a normal world) ... but apparently a jockey is regarded as being the 2nd most deadly job, after offshore fishing. Since the beginnings of horse racing in Australia, 950 jockeys have lost their lives while taking part in the sport. They can also often have eating disorders, such as anorexia and suffer dehydration. Just that needs bitch slapping and for striking those poor beasts with a whip ... which is possibly called something indulgent like a ‘swank sticking’ or something ...

I know I’m not equine inclined, but seriously. What the fuck?

You did not just say that

Arks or ask?

No, not Noah’s vessel that housed millions of coupled animals. This is a language disaster. Try though I may I just can’t get past it. When someone says to me, ‘arks your friend if I can borrow her pen’, it’s something I will never, ever be ready for. Arks, unless of course it’s God sending a message about it raining for 40 days and 40 nights to drown us right out.

Ark ɑːk/ noun 1. (in the Bible) the ship built by Noah to save his family and two of every kind of animal from the flood, Noah's ark. o archaic a ship or boat. plural noun: arks

People! Get it right. It’s ASK. Arse-K. Always has been (well since the 1600’s), always will be. ‘Ask me a question’, or ‘ask me what my favourite colour is’ ... don’t arks me ... it’s frigging lazy. It's frigging wrong and it's a boat, built cubit by cubit. My thoughts are, if it’s cultural, that’s okay. If it’s a speech impediment, that's okay, if not ... don’t use it. It’s discrediting. Most of you are not gangsters or rappers. Back in Chaucer’s day he used ‘I ax’, Chaucer wrote between 1374 to 1386. Even Shakespeare used ‘ask’. Stop it ... it’s ARRRSSSKKKK ... ask. It’s just ask.

Who done it?

What don't you get about it's did not done? 'I did my washing today', not 'I done my washing today.' It's poor grammar. Totally say 'I'm done'. Say 'I've done something wrong'...but saying done instead of did, despite them both being past tense is simply ugly. Don't be using done without another verb beside it...you need to add has, have or had dog. 

While we're on it. Don't fucking say seen when it should be saw.  'I saw the new car, not 'I seen the new car'. Again, chuck in a has, were or have, to name a couple...'he had seen the new car'...stop it.