Thursday, September 13, 2007

Who ever compared The Beatles and The Rolling Stones? Seriously.

You know how great TV shows like to keep you hooked with an off-season catch-up, a compilation show of the greatest moments of the last season? Just to remind you how good the show is, so you tune-in in four months time for the new season? Well, this post isn’t like that at all. It is however an amalgam of the shit I seem to have written in the last month or two, with some vague idea of blogging on it but never getting round to it. Cue montage music…

A couple weeks ago I got fired from a temping gig three hours in. This is a true story -- I'm a bum who cant keep a job down. I'm halfway through a massive stack of data inputting for this medical services company and the boss-lady taps me on the shoulder and leads me into a side office. She hands me a printout of the only two emails I'd sent that morning, one to Robin and one to my sister. Both said, more or less, "I'm at my crappy admin job, this is my email address.”

Boss-lady looks at me.

Yes? I say
I'd like you to leave, she says
Really? I ask
Yes, she says
Right, I say. And she escorts me to the door.

Seriously. Fascist.

Got a job with the Independent Police Complaints Commission a week later. Had an amazing interview, somehow I managed to be witty, pithy, and intelligent. This was a gem, though not too pithy:

What does a team mean to you?
What does a team 'mean' to me?
Yes, what does a team 'mean' to you?
Ah, I'd say that a team means working together and, ah…no. Let me put it like this: you know circuitry? Well, the standard circuit is a series circuit. If one link in that series breaks then the whole circuit fails. Now a 'parallel' circuit is designed so that when any one link breaks the circuit will not fail, because it is self-supporting. To me, that's what 'team' means.
Nice, she said, writing on her clipboard, Very nice.

I feel dirty just typing it.

I seem to have started playing skittles for my mother’s local pub league in the past month or two. Don’t ask me why, I was bored one Friday night and…anyway. There’s a lady there who I haven’t seen in a couple of years, friend of my parents, and she looks different somehow. Then it twigs:

Have you lost weight?
Yeah, three and a half stone
Really, wow that’s great!
Yeah, my husband left me.
Ah.

Have you ever been in a conversation and had that aside to yourself: This is weird, I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. This guy is insane. I wonder if he knows he’s insane? Oop, my turn to contribute to the conversation, better pay attention. I wonder what I’m saying now…?
A couple of weeks ago I was mowing the lawn and the next-door neighbour came out to bring in her washing, wearing a muu muu. She leaned over the fence to me.

Seen who’s moved in across the road?
Uh, no, I noticed some moving vans though.
Saw them yesterday.
She looks around and leans in closer
Pakis
Pakis?
Hmm-mm, Pakis.
Do you mean Pakistanis?
Yeah, Pakistanis, Indians, Somalis, whatever
Well no, there’s a difference
I’ve been waiting ten years to get a bigger flat and this lot jump the queue because they’re ‘asylum seekers’
Really? Are they? Because they don’t look-
They have babies just to get on the list. He gave me a lift home the other day in his taxi.
Who did?
The husband. They’re opening a community centre around the corner, for their kind.
Really? Where the old sheds are? That's good, that area needs some-
Didn’t give me a discount.
Well, I’m not sure I would either.
What?
Well, if you were a stranger in a foreign country wouldn’t you want to have somewhere to go to meet other people like you, you know, people in the same situation? I know that wherever I’ve gone people have been very welcoming, but it’s always nice to be able to connect to things from home, you know? We’re all just trying to get by really aren’t we?
Yeah, well, I’ve been waiting years for a bigger place, and they’ve got this big house. Their kind always do.
Well, it seems like they’ve got a big family. Do they own the house?
I don't know. Council probably, always is isn’t it?
Uhh, well, I’ve got to get on with this grass and, er, you’d better get on with getting those brown shirts in before it starts to rain.

Great joke heard on NPR:

Ron Elving: Learned something new this week about Abraham Lincoln's face.
Ken Rudin: He's on the five dollar bill?
Ron Elving: No, his face - he was asymmetrical
Ken Rudin: He didn't like Jews? Actually that's not true because he was shot in the temple.

Happiness is not something you can define with things. It's a state of mind. You can be stacking shelves and be happy. Conversely you can have a high-powered job and the great house and car and still be unhappy. I was thinking this as I sat on the bus to work looking out the window at two girls sat on the pavement with their backpacks drinking coffee in the morning sunshine.

‘Infinity’ cannot be infinite. How can you define something that is infinite? You cannot define infinite – it has no definition. It is endless. You can define it in contrast to something finite, but you cannot say that something is infinite, you can only guess. When scientists say the universe is infinite they're not really saying that it is, they're saying that they don't know where it stops. And if the universe is infinite, how do they know this? The universe could be finite - it could have edges they say. But we can't see them, we can only suppose them. This is another way of saying "we don't know", so it is in effect infinite. This infinite universe is also expanding, potentially forever; it is doubly infinite, if you'll excuse the oxymoron.
If the universe is expanding then 1) how exactly can something infinite expand? 2) What is this infinity expanding into? 3) And what exactly is the turtle standing on?


Tune in next week for all new, fresh, Occidental Oriental...