Economics and sitting about at home

If I go to the bottle shop $40 buys me a whole slab but if I go to the pub $40 is only likely to get me around seven beers. Economically it just doesn't make sense to go out. This weird disparity causes cocooning, social isolation and really high ratings for masterchef.

Were this disparity reversed however our society may become a far more connected, interesting place. Perhaps people would go out all the time and have real conversations. Your local would probably become like Cheers where everybody knows your name and they're really glad you came.

Instructions

I just spent a good portion of my day putting together a fancy Swedish bike carrier and fitting it to my roof racks. It's the kind of thing that is really easy when you know what you are doing but when you are like me it is completely crap and annoying. The most annoying thing are the instructions, which in some bizarre long-held Swedish tradition, don't have any words at all. They say that they do this so it can be universally understood - I just think they are way too cheap to hire translators.

I really didn't want to squint at some complex diagram to work out what I was supposed to do so instead I checked out YouTube and there was a video of some blonde chick installing it in about three seconds. That just annoyed me even more because she had the correct roof racks to start with and had obviously practised 35 times before to make it look ever so simple. Bitch.

I was in the rain awkwardly holding 2 partially disassembled roof racks (from a different manufacturer), a bike carrier, a set of allen keys and a bunch of crucial little metal parts that were likely to fall in the gutter and get washed away forever. It looked nothing like the video or the crap diagram instructions.

If they really wanted to help surely they would just colour code every screw and the thing that it goes into. They could also have a video with some useless bloke who shows you the fifteen different ways you can go wrong. That way your ego wouldn't feel so crushed when you stuff it up .

Original thought

Today I came up with a new word, which I was pretty damn proud of. I then went to put it into urban dictionary and found three people had already put in definitions for it. That made me feel way less special.

My word was awesomnia. Awesomnia is that feeling you get when you flick on to a late night SBS film and you just can't go to sleep because you just know that any minute the hot Swedish/French/Italian/Japanese chick is going to display her breasts. It's not just saucy foreign films that can give you awesomnia. The word pretty much covers any activity so good that it forces you to stay up past your bed time.

Had the internet never existed I could have gone on thinking that I'm a unique and special flower who invents cool new words. I hate you internet.

MTV Cribs

MTV Cribs is a little like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous but for rappers and without the host with cool voice. It's one of the funniest shows I have watched. All these badass guys who rap about living on the mean streets of Compton and getting shot at are proudly showing off the fancy kitchen appliances and oversized shoe closets within their plush mansions. Suddenly they are fussing over their soft furnishings and talking up their antique crystal chandeliers. Good to see they are keeping it real.

Pods

When I worked at Kmart they used to have these cool pod things that you would put the cash in. You'd then put the pod in a tube and like magic it would be sucked up in to the roof at lightning speed. Using the money pods was pretty much the coolest thing about working at Kmart because there really wasn't much good about working at Kmart. For starters I was often wearing a novelty tie featuring Kermit the frog playing golf and on top of that embarrassment I spent most of my time scanning oversized underwear of oversized pensioners who would then pay with an assortment of small change and buttons which they mistook for small change. I once gave directions to Kamahl when he was trying to find David Jones but other than that the money pods were definitely the most positive memory I had.

I would really love it if instead of using boring means of transport such as cars, trains and buses we could use pods. Apparently it is possible. Some dude called Lyle Zapato has been working on it. Check it out

The deli counter

The ticket system works okay at Woolworths however I think there is a better way to go about things. If I were running the place I'd have a system where the most physically ugly get served first. Ugly people suffer so many hardships in life. In job interviews they are often passed over in favour of more attractive candidates. It's also rare for them to attract supermodels as girlfriends (unless they really rich). People also say really mean things to them like "wow, you fell out of the ugly tree and hit every stick on the way down."

My ticket system would allow ugly people to get some advantage out of being ugly. Having a face like a car crash would suddenly be the passport to instant cabanossi. My system would also give women something to look forward to as their looks fade. Perhaps they would even stop buying overpriced wrinkle cream if they knew crows feet would allow them to purchase devon that much quicker. Of course it would also make waiting a far more pleasurable experience. Every time you got overlooked it would be a small ego boost. Instead of feeling pissed off after waiting around for ten minutes you would probably feel mega hot.

Scammer

I've been trying to sell my bike online and I got someone saying they would pay $200 more for it than I was asking! Awesome huh? They then sent me an email saying they had sent to my paypal account $2850 which was $2100 for the bike and an extra $750 that I was to send via Western Union to a "shipping agent" in Turkey. I pretty quickly realised it was a scam and this was confirmed when I got bogus emails purportedly from paypal claiming I had received a payment.

I sent the scammer "Laura" the following email.

Hi Laura,

I’ve just had some great news. I was speaking to my uncle Clarence and he happens to be travelling to Turkey on business next week. He said he his happy to take the bike over with him on the plane saving you those outrageously high shipping charges.

I thought it odd that Clarence was travelling to Turkey as his job is wholesaling cheap Chinese carpets and as far as I knew Turkey has a fine tradition of carpet making. Clarence however told me “Turkey is full of good for nothing scammers who try to pass off cheap Chinese carpets as antique Turkish ones, fooling gullible people from overseas rather than putting in an honest day’s work.” He then said some very racist things regarding the personal hygiene and sexual predilections of the Turkish.

I am afraid Clarence’s attitudes may have been coloured by those of his grandfather Walter ‘Pretty Boy’ Watson who served in Gallipoli and was maimed in the exploding camel incident of Christmas 1915. Walter was enjoying the Christmas day ceasefire when a camel was sent across no man’s land from the Turks carrying what appeared to be an offering of Turkish delight. The camel was however rigged with explosives and unfortunately Walter copped a flying hoof square in the melon. From that day on his moniker became purely ironic and he never again trusted a Turk.

Anyhow, if you would just like to let me know your address I can get my uncle Clarence to drop off the bike along with the extra money you supposedly sent through for the shipping. I’ll try to make sure he doesn’t have one of his racist outbursts.

Cheers,


Jamie