Month: March 2004

I was going to wait til I’d been doing the job a year until I wrote this, but hopefully i won’t be doing it that long. I will only say that this refers to the local main drag. To mention it’s name would be connecting too many of the dots.

Smelliest Shop: Tied between the fish shop and Subway. (I let the cat out of the bag a bit about this the other day).

Even a month ago I would’ve put the fish shop at 1, but there’s this thing about Subway that it seems to get more odourous each time I smell it. And for some reason, fish-mingled air actually feels more natural than their terrible yeasts.

The butcher shops are no picnic either. Although I do like that fact they’re holding out with the old-school format compared to chain-this and chain-that.

Most verbose acknowledgemnet of my presence: Man from the littlest paintshop. I hand over the paper and he says, “Good, thank-you, good on you, tah”. I imagine that if I stood still holding the paper, he’d just keep on going mostly repeating but also throwing in the odd new phrase, like some amazing random sequence machine.

Most enthusiastic person: There was a woman working in an office equipment shop who once raised her fists in the air and said, “Yay!” when I walked in. She doesn’t work there anymore.

Shopkeeper Most Likely to be an Alien: There’s a medical practionioner whose work is to do with that 5-lettered boney thing in the back, and lemme tellya…

It’s easy to take for granted the myriad nuances and minute complexities of being/behaving human when you are one. And I’m sure that in the grand scale, this “man” is doing a pretty good at it, but it’s just not cutting it with me. This morning he says, “Gooood Moooornang ThaaangYooou”. His surname is related to the job he does. Sometimes you’ll get situations like a dentist named Blood — we all know those situations — it’s so ironic that it’s got to be real. But this guy’s name/job match is not quite there.

Once I saw this Tarago or econovan (small people mover vehicle) and it must’ve been smashed up good, then panel beaten back into shape, but the paint was that kind of dirty brown blotchy that panel beaters use. It looked shocken. Yet evidentally, the owners had then gone to the trouble of making a stencil and spray-painted the brand and model of the car back onto the door.

That’s what the alien-man situation reminds me of.

Not that he’s bad. He must be a benevolent alien because he’s helping people get well. I actually read about that kind a month back in Nexus.

Most Interesting looking person: Convoluted Overlays guy. He wears suspenders and has those glasses that sit right down the edge of his nose. Older sort of guy. Still uses Brill-cream I think.

Shop I’d most like to work at: Retail Displays shop — mannequins and plenty of them. There’s all these naked female mannequins in various poses that I see through the window. I almost feel like I should look away, but I don’t.
Plus the hours are good – midday to 5pm – can’t beat that.

Are hot-x buns okay with choc-chips?

Well, I heard a voice in my head and it was Jesus. He said they were fine by him and then he dared me to let down the tyres of a bright yellow 4WD in the carpark. I said there were too many people around and that I’d come back when it was dark, but it wasn’t good enough for him.

I writ a whole bunch of other witty stuff here but when I pressed the Add Item button it dissapeared into that void where doomed weblog entries go. Thanks to those incompetent fools who I pay money to for renting this webserver space. Or maybe it was Jesus being vengeful. I’ve mentally vacillated about giving the webhost a public shit-canning when I leave it, but that was the last straw and now I consider it my duty as a whingey net-user not to let anyone else make the same mistake I did.

It took over two years to get around to the good stuff — Freud. In hindsight, maybe I should’ve just bought a book of his and taken the travel agent job instead.

Sitcoms, soap operas – infact all kinds of dramas owe so much to the original flavour of psychoanalysis.

Last year I was stopped on the street by an acquaintance who asked me why I was studying psychology. I realised that I had no idea. If there had been a reason, it was long forgotten.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve found my purpose in life — writing poo jokes. Well, there’s heaps of disgusting stuff radiating directly from psychoanalysis, and also it’s various off-shoots. And there’s plenty of comedic angles that are yet to be exploited.

I normally wouldn’t show my hand, but this stuff is so good;
“The Anal Personality — — The anal personality stems from the anal stage of development. In contrast to gratification associated with the mouth and oral activity, which can be expressed in adulthood in a relatively unrepressed form, the gratifications of anal impulses must undergo considerable transformation. In general, the traits of the anal character are related to processes going on at the anal stage of development that have not been completely relenquished. The important processes are the bodily processes (accumulation and release of fecal material) and interpersonal relations (the struggle of wills over toilet training).

Tying the two together; the anal person sees excretion as symbolic of enormous power. That such a view persists is shown in many everyday expressions such as the reference to the toilet as ”the throne“. The change for the oral to the anal character is one from ”give me“ to ”do what I tell you“, or from ”I have to give you“ to ”I must obey you“.

The anal character is known by a triad of traits, called the anal triad: orderliness and cleanliness, parsimony and stinginess, and obstinancy. The emphasis on cleanliness is expressed in the saying ”Cleanliness is next to godliness“. The anal-compulsive personality has a need to keep everything clean and in order, representing a reaction formation against things that are disorderly and unclean.

The second trait of the triad, parsimony-stinginess, relates to the anal-compulsives interest in holding onto things, an interest dating back to a wish to retain the powerful and important feces. The third trait in the triad, obstinancy, relates to the anal character’s infantile defiance against parting with stools, particularly on command of others. Dating back to toilet training and the struggle of wills, anal personalities often seek to be in control of things and have power or dominance over others.

– I have a theory that people who work in chronically smelly places tend to increase in mass, perhaps in some response to the bad air. I’m talking about places like fish shops, Subway.

– I’ve got a lot of respect for dogs that hang out in the front yard, see you cruising by and slotting the paper, and who don’t get worked up about it. No barking or yapping, just the dog equivelent of a quick nod.

Everytime i get to this joint it’s warmed up and sunny mid-morning. I peek though and hear the sound of the pool is very inviting.

Here is a list of most intelligent dog breeds. It’s on the internet, so you don’t have to believe it. Anecdotal evidence would suggest the ozzy sheep dog should be higher, rottweilers are evil and huskies should be on there somwhere.