Drunken grub

It's bad enough having to dodge idiot non-thinking pedestrians who are sober - it's even harder having to avoid them when they're pissed as a parrot.

I tucked in behind this tram, as it is the best thing for clearing pedestrians out of the way that I have encountered yet. You just have to watch out for those that race out behind it without looking first after it goes by.

Just as it gets going, a drunk gets annoyed at having to wait for a few seconds, so he gobs on the tram as it passes by (hard to see in the video) - he then proceeded to step out in front of me, but thankfully saw me coming and back pedalled quickly. What a grub.

What would I have done if he'd spat on me? Not sure really - but that's something I'd like to avoid altogether.

How to hate banks

I have not seen the TV commercial for the Commonwealth Bank that is getting some stick at the moment (and I have no intention of deliberately looking out for it either - I paid good money for a digital video recorder so I could skip shite like that).

But I have had to put up with these BankWest posters that are infesting Darling Harbour. I shall henceforth refer to the said bank as "BankFester", or "The Festering Bank", because it would be unfair to those that masturbate to call them a pack of wankers.



The marketing manager that sat around and got stoned with the advertising agency that came up with this series of ads should be flung testicles first off the top of the BankWest building, and the advertising people should be impaled.

Why?

What kind of gaggle of fucking idiots could ever imagine that the purpose of a bank is to make you happy?

There is only one way my bank could make me happy. Give me at least a million dollars, and then don't expect me to pay it back. And that does not include things like me going bankrupt, or defrauding the bank, computer error, or me taking 19 staff hostage and forcefeeding them the testicles of advertising executives until they gave me lots of money.

I am talking about the bank just being nice and giving me lots of money, with no strings attached.

Can't do that? Well then - fuck off. You lack the ability to make me happy. You exist to provide me with a service, and there is no proviso that says that the provision of that service has to make me happy. If you can figure out a way to make your ATM's give me a handjob everytime I take some money out, you might be getting somewhere, but your function is to take cash deposits, not sperm ones.

To me, dealing with the bank is like doing a poo. It is a necessary thing. It is something that has to be done on a regular basis if normal life is to be sustained. One can generally choose whether to do a poo in a nice place or a nasty place (like the toilets at Town Hall station), and you can use a selection of farty-masking odorisers if you want, and you can make things more pleasant by buying expensive toilet paper, but you can't disguise the fact that you are doing a crap. You are laying a woombi. It may involve skidmarks and slimy bits and heaven forbid, a bit of blood. If curry was consumed the night before, all bets of a pleasant experience are off.

In short, unless you are German and have a fetish for certain odd things, sitting on the porcelein throne is unlikely to be the highlight of your day. You can make it as unpleasant as possible, but I don't run around going, "Gee, I'm really looking forward to doing a crap after lunch. I love doing a crap. It's just ace."

We just do it, try our best not to notice the smell, and move on.

Banking is the same. Accept it, and get over it.

Hell's Accountants

Is there anything sadder than a couple of middle aged accountants on a Harley?



I hope I don't get this stupid when I reach their age.

Head tilting does not lead to happiness

I spent an hour this morning at the Orange Grove Markets in Sydney. They one of those organic/mung bean/expensive inner city jobbies that's held in the grounds of a state school grasping for a bit of extra cash.

On the whole, I have to say that it's a good market. The range of beef, veal, venison, duck, goose, funny sausages, lamb and goat is enough to make a PETA member like me salivate for a week (PETA as in People Eating Tasty Animals).

I'm not so keen on the organic vegetables, as they cost the earth. I could buy a small basket of organic fruit at Orange Grove for $5, or pop out to the Flemington Markets and get a whole case of the chemical soused stuff for less than that. The only difference is the cup of bugs that comes with the organic stuff for free.

The bread stands were also very good - there were more varieties of sour dough than you could poke a stick at, and there were unusual variations like pumpkin bread and stuff like that.

So I could happily spend quite a bit of money there on the produce - if I could bear to put up with all the tilty headed shoppers again. It really must be the mother-lode of tilty-headedness in this area. I saw a bloke with a T-shirt from some Pine Gap protest (why is it that socialists like to turn a protest into a commercial event by selling souveniers?) There were any number of hairy legged types wandering around in sandals and hemp shirts, all looking completely miserable. It was the one thing that stood out - the place had a dank, grey air of misery hanging over it like a cloud.

When I go to Flemington, which is a sea of wogs and gooks as far as they eye can see, the place is alive with happy people. There are lots of people talking to each other in loud, happy voices, much back slapping going on, shaking of hands and smiling faces. Orange Grove on the other hand is where you go to see people bent double under the weight of the world. Being constantly worried about the planet must take a terrible toll on people. The waking up in the middle of the night because a bear drowned. The pressure of constant diary juggling in order to fit in another protest. The worry about showing up at the markets in a Nimbin hemp shirt that someone else is wearing.

The biggest problem is surely the strain on the neck caused by the tilting of the head. These people must live with constant neck pain. Wherever I looked, as soon as people started talking to each other, their heads took on a compassionate tilt - even if they were discussing organic bean curd. I'm not sure how one can have compassion for tofu, but it's something these people manage to achieve.

In short, their worrying about the planet has sucked all the joy out of them. The markets were infested by the hair-shirt wearing equivalents of the Living Dead. So next time you see a bunch of tree huggers having a protest, just remember how miserable they are and that they'd be happier if you ran over them with a bulldozer and put them out of their misery. The real reason why they run around forests complaining about logging is that they want a tree to fall on them so that they can be squashed flat.

Hug hippies by all means, but make sure you get them in a bear hug and squeeze them really, really tight.