How Fucking Annoying

This is what I find extremely annoying. Band-Aid comments. I guarantee, except for Nelly cause who gives a shit why he wears one of his face, put a Band-Aid anywhere on your person, and people will ask you about it. Now Band-Aid’s have been around since 1921 when some guy named Earle was concerned about his wife cutting her fingers while cooking him dishes in the kitchen and made the first one (later his boss James Johnson ripped off the idea, made him VP and made Johnson & Johnson a lot of fucking money)….true story but I digress. Try this tomorrow. Put a Band-Aid on your finger, your hand, neck...anywhere visible and you will have at least 3 comments about it. Why do people care?

“What’d ya do to yourself?”
“Knife slip?”…huge guffaw…
“What happened? Cut yourself?”.…”Nah…just love wearing Band-Aid’s, fuck head!”
People don’t even care why really. They just want to ask. I reckon it’s the attention factor we got as kids, brandishing a Band-Aid on a scraped knee during some sort of incredible kiddy adventure. After the tears and mercurochrome, it was a statement of valour. Every kid was secretly envious of that band-aided knee, finger, chin…it was the mark of a champion and a story to tell. But when you’re 45 and you have a skin tag that’s catching on a seat belt, and you have a small round Band-Aid on it-no body needs to know about it.

How annoying is this when you are pregnant? Strangers touching your belly and believing whole heartedly that it’s ok to do so. You’d be strangers on a train if you were not sporting a small bump filled with baby. It happened often to me too, in a supermarket, at the football once, on the street, in the post office. “Ask me first mother fucker, I might say yes”.
When did I become public property? I can’t imagine going up to anyone not pregnant, that I didn’t know and touching them on the tummy, and saying “Hmmm, just imagining if you were pregnant”. It is not cool. I realised that if I kept my hand on my belly they wouldn’t be so quick to reach out, although on one occasion a lady at Woollies in the confectionery aisle, slipped her hand next to mine anyway. I wanted to say to her, “You know I’m here too don’t you? That belly you’re touching is part of me right?”…I swear she would have had the shock of her life…it talks!!!! Fucking annoying.


Annoying much? I was at a service station café half way up to the Sunshine coast and stopped to get my 5 year old a small milk shake.
“Can’t do a small one, “the idiot said.
“Why not? Just use a small coffee cup,” I said noticing the large milk shake cups.
“Nup, no button for a small milk shake on the cash register?”
“Are you kidding? You have three different coffee sizes and you can’t do a small milk shake for a kid?”
“Nup, no button for a small milk shake on the cash register?”
*Stare in an unbelievably disturbed fashion for a while* 
“I’ll just pay for the large size then…but can you put it in a small coffee cup please.”
“Mmm not sure.”
“Right so you’re saying that my child can’t have a milk shake in a small cup because the stupid cash register doesn’t have the right button, that my choice is being controlled by a missing button?….ARE YOU SHITTING ME?”

People in my office are over interested in other people’s lunches or food in general. I find that very annoying. Well particularly when they are interested in my lunch. Now I get the whole lunch envy thing. Especially when I am looking down the barrel-(or staring disinterestedly at my plate) of a salad comprised of a tomato, iceberg lettuce leaf, a dash of balsamic and 3 pieces of cucumber. I smell the lasagne’s, the Thai curries and the cheese toasties and I have lunch envy. I do. But I don’t get up in someone’s face about their dish and prod at it with the tip of my index finger.
“Mmmm looks great. You make that?”
I don’t stoop over a plate of steaming delights taking in a big whiff and dropping possible hairs into it and say, “Yum what’s that?”
“Yuk what’s that?” I want to say pointing in their face.
I had a bowl of muesli this morning and put some goji berries in it...well didn’t that start a conversation,
“Oh what’s that?”
“Muesli.”
“No, the red things?”
“Goji berries?”
“Really? Goji berries.”
Fascination and then,..she did it...she poked one...what the fuck? It’s not a slug, or part of an  unidentified bug species that may bite or retaliate in some freaky fashion..it’s a BERRY and it’s MY BREAKFAST!!! It’s annoying.

Little Weirdos

Honestly what the fuck is going on with the jockey? That strange little man with the weird helium voice and the coloured silk shirts... Seen a naked jockey? No hair...none. Hairless like those Sphynx cats but much, much weirder. They are less built than my 5 year old daughter. When I hear a jockey interviewed I freak out because I think it’s a fucked up Muppet. They are oompah loompahs with money. They are the basis for the Randy Newman song, “Short People”;

‘They got little hands 
Little eyes 
They walk around 
Tellin' great big lies 
They got little noses 
And tiny little teeth 
They wear platform shoes 
On their nasty little feet ‘....sing it!! See what I’m saying?

These people have to sit in booster seats at restaurants and they smack their pixie faces into the ground when they sneeze. I asked one at Dooley’s Irish bar once where his pot of gold was...and never heard his soprano reply. Even the name of the jockey attire is weird. Toque (the hat), lunettes (no idea), casaque (the shirt), breeches aka pantaloons (or pants in a normal world)...but apparently a jockey is regarded as being the 2^nd most deadly job, after offshore fishing. From 2002 to 2006 five deaths and 861 serious injuries were recorded. They can also often have eating disorders such as anorexia and suffer dehydration. Just that needs bitch slapping and for striking those poor beasts with a whip...which is possibly called something indulgent like a ‘swank stick’ or something...

I know I’m not equine inclined but seriously, what the fuck?

A Bee in My Bonnet and a Debit From My Purse

I have a bee in my bonnet about what we should and shouldn't pay for these days, cause maybe we’re already paying in other ways… 

I resent it a little when we are asked to pay 20 cents for wasabi when we buy sushi rolls at our local sushi shop. The soy sauce comes free and they usually chuck five of those little suckers in, but you have to pay for a minute envelope of wasabi. Wasabi…it goes with sushi. Like salt goes with pepper. To me this is like ordering a ham and salad roll without the top of the roll or a piece of fish with out the chips. They belong together, they just do. What’s it all about this extra charge? Will they start charging for straws when we buy a drink?

  

Tomato sauce is another condiment we are often asked to shell out extra for with a pasty or a pie. Again they belong together. Don’t fucking charge me for it. In South Australia they don’t charge you for sauce, or bread rolls (but we’ll get to them later). They have a couple of sauce bottles behind the pie warmer and when you say yes to sauce they push the spout in and it distributes through that pasty or pie beautifully. That friggin' plastic sachet of tomato sauce is completely pointless on top of a pie or pasty and you can’t dip. It’s not the done way and the packaging is far too small to accommodate it. 

We should not have to pay extra for a dinner roll at dinner. The bread roll with a meal comes free when you eat out in Adelaide. In other cities you pay for it. Often up to two dollars. They might not have Sizzler there anymore but they have free dinner rolls.

The sneaky charge. I have found this previously with regards to water in restaurants. Mostly when dining out when we ask for water, it comes free in a water bottle with glasses. But sometimes there’s a sneaky charge and it arrives in plastic still water bottles pre opened or worse in Perrier bottles with bubbles and there is a charge. I don’t mind paying for a Perrier but ask me if that’s what I want, don’t take the piss.

I loathe having to pay for parking at local markets and/or pay an entry fee. I want to save my money for the vendors. I want to give my money to them for their wares and encourage them to make more wares and feel loved and supported by their community. I don’t want to pay Brisbane City Council for the right to park my car at a venue that I can support small business owners at. I hate that. In fact, in all honesty I hate paying for parking of any kind actually. First in first served. Maybe charge people if they stay too long but there should be no need to pay upfront. Get over yourselves. Paying for parking in Brisbane is fucking unbelievably extravagant. Sometimes it’s a choice between educating my daughter and parking. And apparently dearest in the world. How do they justify this? I usually take the train…and hell hasn't that gone up. Public transport costs!!! It’s perverse.

Road tolls. A bell tolls and that’s the only toll we should ever know. We already pay for roads. We pay taxes and rates. We do not have a say in whether, where or why new roads and tunnels are built. Either you have the money to build it Main Roads or you don’t, or you save for it. Like we save for a holiday perhaps. Brisbane just does it cause they fucked up all their roads but just dropping them from a great height and expecting drivers to make some sense of them…then they need more cause they neglected to count the population properly. Perhaps fuck off the abacus.

When using the toilet in Europe there can be a fee. My poor travel buddy in Salzburg had the runs and was busting while we scrounged for a few groschen (at the time) to put in the door so she could get in. You pay for ablutions. We also had to pay for a square of toilet paper in Hong Kong. I found this odd. Toileting should be free.

I do want to state for the record that I am not penny-pinching, tight, mean, miserable or stingy about money. I give money to charities, buskers and homeless people. I just feel that things have gone a bit far and that some things should just be part of the service. It’s just good manners. 

IKEA

Love it or hate it...it’s here and is in addition a very probable cause for the divorce rate going up! Well that and driving in a strange city with your spouse. But I digress..

Take me for example, I love Ikea, love it! but my partner hates it. If I say, “Hey babe, let’s go to Ikea”, I get “Oh I’m sorry hon, I’d rather pitch myself in front of a bullet train, thanks though”. I really love how there are small rooms pre set up and clear directions for easy and enjoyable meandering. I just want to curl up on that nice white couch, feet on a stunning ottoman after picking a book off those sexy bookshelves or park myself at a nice cottage kitchen and make out it’s mine...oh yes indeed.

I think If we asked loads of couples, one of the two would admit happily that they love its guts and the other would hate it as passionately...I’m surprised there isn’t more singles (person sans spouse) wandering around on their own through the IKEA labyrinth quite frankly. Why do we make our spouse come with us? It’s agony for both. My partner tries to continually steer me through IKEA via a short cut across the building rather than following the helpful arrows through every section. This annoys me because what if I miss something important? But no, it’s all about getting to the $1 hot dog at the end. And IKEA is a restaurant, a cheap one. Incredible. Reminds me of the days Target had the Apple restaurant. Once we even went to IKEA for breakfast. It was amazing. See when I was in Sweden I don’t at all remember comestibles being that cheap. In fact I remember spending $21 for a boring salad and that was in 1989...so a $2.95 breaka and Parmigiana or Swedish Meatballs for $6.50 is an unbelievable surprise. It’s a treat for me the whole event. 

What's more without IKEA we would not have as much knowledge about what an allen key is and now we understand the term flat pack. There would not be blogs on how the hell to build IKEA furniture, gay men would still be shopping and we would not have this joke,

“My friend just bought an IKEA franchise.”

“Really? Where?”

“I don’t know, he’s still putting it together.”

Good on ya Sweden. I just realised why the partners get dragged along kicking a screaming regardless of the promise of cheap Swedish food at the end of the maze...it’s to carry the bastard flat packs.