chaos

and in a fit of fuck it's monday and i should be on top of my shit or the rest of the week is going to be fucked i've decided to clean my living* room.

my strategy is fairly straight forward - start at one end and carve a swathe of order until i'm left with a pile of junk that i will throw out

but i know half way through i'll find something that will distract me and what should take 20 minutes will take the rest of the night

lucky i have left over hors d'oeuvres to get me through the night

*the room that contains my kitchen, lounge room, and study

griefing

i have a sporadic hobby. when i get pissed off with something from the corporate world i send them emails letting them know.

since reading a waxy article i've decided that what i'm doing actually has a name.

griefing*.

take for example, my dialogue with angus & robertson. i ordered a book 6 weeks ago and they claim to not have it in stock.

me:

thanks carina,

i'm not overly happy to have to buy my brother another birthday present.

he did want this book though so let's keep the order. i'll just be out of pocket for the second book i buy him (from a competitor site).

in fact, offering me a discount off my next purchase would go a long way to ensure that a 'next purchase' from your site and not your competitors happens.

them:

Firstly I would like to apologise for the delay in response to your email dated 19th May regarding the delay and non supply of your order.

I must agree with you that it would have been common curtesy (sic) to advise you earlier of the difficulties we were experiencing in trying to obtain this book for you, which would have allowed you sufficient time to find a replacement gift for your recipient.

Due to this delay and you not being advised earlier I will apply a 10% discount on this order. This is the least I can do for a valued customer and hopefully will not deter you from visiting our website again in the future to have a more improved experience.

me (3 weeks later):

I'm sure you mystery shop your competitors to review their levels of service, but if you like I'd be happy to forward some examples of their emails telling me that my order has been received, that my order has been shipped, and when I can expect my purchase to arrive. Complete with tracking numbers.

Sorry, I just expect that in this day and age buying a book online shouldn't involve these delays without any type of updates. It's been 6 weeks and I don't think I should have to keep asking for updates.

i don't really mean to fuck up someone's day. i just want my book. and i want to push any dumb company who can't get a simple (based on lots of other companies getting it right) online ordering system to either work properly, or to stop pretending that they have their shit together.

and now my most recent dialogue involves confirmation that the book was delivered, but wouldn't fit through the letterbox so was left on the street.

i live in kings cross.

i still don't have my book.

some junkie probably swapped my douglas coupland novel for clean fit.

they tell me that they're going to send another copy...

*note that the word griefing actually comes from some geeky second life scenario where you fuck with somebody online.

a brief history of time

there's a real world?

there's gotta be at least 6

are you counting gold coast theme parks?

clickityswooshclickityswooshclickityswoosh....

so it's going well then..?

interesting that 75% of the word 'mall' is mal

the next best thing

what's the big yellow thing in the sky, hurting my eyes?

zip (and other great inventions)

zip, zip lock bags, um.. zip-it-ee-doo-da?

until there was...velcro

a joke, and a challenge

damn

double damn

click here to unsubscribe

water chill factor

huh? ..oooh..

sexual predators of the sea apparently..

do not say wamp wamp

live theatre

local talent

the conditions i work under

too early

the audreys

channel shifting

pps

there's danger everywhere

the barking

grrr..swooosh..sizzle..cough

maybe..just maybe..the curse has lifted

i think this adds to your phame

bad monkey

suburbia saga

these jokes are a joke

damn wig lady

dan wi lad

speaking of kidnapping

that real girl

did you just email me a black hole?

what's a door?

what's a double dutch?

it's the language we're speaking right now

to receiving your text message

did you break the internet again?

what's this on my hand

this is how i spend my evenings. really.

it's a shocking event for the zoo community

hades

it's just a hot bread shop

it's quiet. too quiet

oh no..wait a minute..

with a brain like this

how do 6.5 billion people fit on a planet the size of a tennis ball?

that's what email is for

one true thing, two questions and two lies

sounds like the conversations i have with my parental units

adelaide flights

i always lie in order, i shouldn't, it's a dead giveaway

garry kasparov griefed by flying penis

bah! to the dumb marketers

more annoying people

these are the subject lines for the email conversations i've had with the girl i just started dating..

voigt-kampff test

1. you see a man douse himself in benzodrine chanting nnanna be o gorst. he takes a flash lens from his coat and raises his arm towards the sun.

what do you do?

2. you're standing in line waiting for food. the woman in front of you is carving a glasnost symbol into her kids head with an iron shard.

do you expose her ideology and take her place (knowing that she and her family will be sent to japanland) or pretend not to see it?

3. you're sitting in a park eating a sandwich (it can be any kind of sandwich). some birds fly down from the tree and start pecking at the ground near your feet looking for crumbs. they start to peck closer to your feet, then at your feet, then at your hands, then there are hundreds of them trying to peck your face off.

will you get a different sandwich next time, or take the same sandwich to a different park?

irk # 43

another thing i can't stand
is having something
stuck in my teeth.

when i say this to people they say
do you want some floss

but i don't

i don't generally get stuff
stuck between my teeth
it's usually in the middle
of my back teeth
like it's the fucking andes
and a small village of
irritating people are
just sitting in a valley
ignoring the

you're not welcome here

encouragement from my tongue

no, a toothpick is the only cure

sometimes i carry them
if i remember

other times - mostly at work -
i discharge a staple
from my stapler
and use that

it's not ideal

irk # 76

do you know what irks me about this weather?

the wind chill.

not because it makes it colder (although that sucks mightily) but because it seems that we're now getting wind chill temperatures in our weather reports - like today it was 19, but with the wind chill it felt like 11.

it just creates a paradox as far as i'm concerned. it's all well and good to say it feels like 11, but what happens when it is 11 and it feels like 4? do we say that 19 feels like 11 used to feel before we decided that 11 now feels like 4 if it's a windy day?

this shit killed me in canada - no one cares what the actual temperature is - it sounds far more dramatic to talk about how cold it feels. as far as i'm concerned minus 20 feeling like minus 34 is still so fucking ridiculously cold either way that they might as well just say "hey - it's minus 20, but it feels fucking ridiculously cold. put your mitts on kids."

do you see what i'm saying? it's like describing the taste of genetically modified fruit that's made to taste like other fruit. make a banana taste like an apple, but then make an apple that tastes like an orange, and you're left with no frame of reference for the banana.

paradoxical conversations ensue, and anarchy follows shortly thereafter.

give it to me straight mr weatherman - your scaremongering belittles you.

is it your birthday?

i'm trying to remember what year it was. when my girlfriend had an abortion.

how old would my kid have been right now

what sort of dad would i have made? how much of what i've done in the last 13 (?) years would i have had to have given up.. how much have i missed out on..

would i have been sitting here right now? drinking wine and writing an essay for a stupid graduate program in a flat above the hookers in darlinghurst?

not bloody likely. maybe.

and i'll never know. that's the hardest part.