Dropping balls and money bags

6

I enjoy observing human behaviour when the cloying whiff of obscene amounts of money is in the air. Over the past few days the radio station I’m forced to listen to at work has had callers talking about what they’d do with $90 million if they won this week’s lottery bonanza.

So far, all the dreams I’ve heard have been stock-standard ‘I want everyone to think I’m a nice and deserving person’ responses of paying off the house, helping out the family, giving money to charity and making sure Aunt Mavis gets that cataract surgery so she can crochet doilies for the goodwill shop again.

Okay, that’s what, a million bucks — what about the rest? Australians often have too strong a leaning towards social desirability and gloss over normal and sometimes entertaining human traits of selfishness and greed (gawd, just cringe at the local versions of The Biggest Loser and Big Brother when contestants apologise profusely and cry before evicting people when they’ve been plotting callously for days beforehand).

I think in this instance the truth will make far better radio. No one has said they’ll piss gross amounts of cash against the wall on world cruises, a different Ferrari for each day of the week and the holiday shack on a private island with a 90-foot luxury yacht berthed alongside. And, like a lot of lottery winners end up, they’ll probably be broke and miserable a couple of years later with families fractured, friendships destroyed, missing their former social structure and lifestyle and still dealing with guilt and other emotions associated with the heavy responsibility of instant wealth. See, my truth is far more fun. I want to be the barrel girl for this draw!

If I won (not likely at this stage because I don’t know what day the draw is) I wouldn’t tell a soul. I don’t have the strength to deal with a stream of long-lost third cousins twice removed and ‘friends’ I barely know who see my name in the paper. I don’t want every charity in town hunting me because I already donate to the ones I support and I’ll choose where I’ll anonymously direct more money. People I want to help will find little and big acts of kindness done and maybe years down the track they’ll find out by whom. And I really don’t want to see myself in the weekly magazines’ celebs without makeup issues when I’m busted down at the shops in tracky pants, gardening clogs and a pirate beanie on my head.

But if you see a new benevolent organisation called the Gout Foundation you’ll know who won the bucks :-) .

Crank-o-meter: waiting for my numbers to come up

29 June 2009

M’okay

15

I was at home last Friday afternoon, having a marvellous time lounging in my slippers and housecoat while eating bon bons and watching Bold and the Beautiful.

The phone rang. It was a good Samaritan (are there any bad ones?), who I’ll call A, telling me he saw a woman I work with, B, parked on the side of a road about five minutes from me and looking distressed.

I called her mobile phone and it was switched off. I tried a few minutes later and it was still off. I fretted that she might not have been able to call roadside assistance if her phone battery had gone flat, so I got in my car and went looking for her.

I turned a bend in the road and saw a car with its bonnet up, my workmate kicking and yelling in her native language and about half a dozen bags strewn across the clearing where she had parked. And several mobile phones were sitting on the roof of her car. The scene was a tad confusing.

She gave me a hug and pondered my magical telepathic powers. I confessed that someone we used to work with drove past but couldn’t stop and gave me a phone call because, you know, my phone is switched on sometimes. I asked if her phone was broken and she said no, the phone number I had was on an expensive plan and she keeps it turned off. She uses another phone to make calls. M’okay. That explains some of the phones, kind of.

Have you called the RACV?

No, I’ve called C.

Does C work for the RACV?

No, she’s my friend.

Is she a mechanic?

No.

M’okay, have you called your husband?

No, he lost his mobile phone.

Can you call him at work?

No, I don’t know the phone number.

Okay, you need to call the RACV.

I can’t, I don’t know where I am.

Call and give the operator your membership details, and hand the phone to me.

She called, but was asked to describe the problem before she was asked her location.

“I was driving and there was smoke everywhere, the car was on FIRE! The car was on FIRE!”

Hmm, I thought, I hadn’t smelled the evidence of fire. I took the phone and described to the operator that the radiator hose was detached and there was no danger of fire at this time. Oh, and here’s where we are. Up to 90 minutes? Can’t do much about that, m’okay, thanks, we’ll be here, bye.

To pass the time I asked B why her bags were scattered about the landscape. She had become so angry at her car that she threw everything that was in the car out of the car. After that, two nice men, D and E, stopped by to lift the car’s bonnet and check the ‘fire’.

Hang on, you’ve had time to toss your luggage, have a hissy fit at your car and talk to some locals who knew the name of the road so you could have called roadside assistance?

Yes.

M’okay. It was going to be a long wait.

An hour later C rocked up for moral support and D and E dropped by again on their way home to check into her welfare. None of them had thought to bring cheese and biscuits. The RACV mechanic took more than 90 minutes but fixed the problem in less than 10 minutes. I’d have clapped his grand efforts but my hands had frozen by that stage. It was very dark.

Mr RACV disappeared into the night, D and E had livestock to find and feed in the darkness, I needed to go home and turn the heater on and B and C opted to go and have a drink. I asked B if she was going to call her husband as he’d have arrived home by then and be wondering where she was. No, she said. M’okay.

Crank-o-meter: m’okay

9 June 2009

Another reason the public hospital system is overloaded

0


Today’s idiot, a man from Brisbane, is in hospital being treated for severe burns after trying to destroy a nest of ants by setting it on fire.

It would be hard to find a person who hasn’t witnessed a, “Gee, that was close, how’s your eyebrows, mate?” moment with someone trying to torch an ants nest, kick-start a barbecue or turn damp wood into a bonfire with a few litres of petrol from the jerry can. I personally find the WHOOF sound unpredictable and terrifying, but I’m a conservative sort when dealing with ignition sources and combustible materials.

The man’s going to be all right, but I doubt he was in a condition to enjoy the helicopter ride to the hospital.

Self-service pest control paid for by state emergency services and hospitals: cheaper than the local contractor any day.

Crank-o-meter: think

15 November 2008

Can I wear my headphones in class?

0


The not playing well with others theme continues to the joy of everyone in my path. Stella the horoscope lady on the radio said we’re in the grip of a very powerful full moon and Scorpio is biting Uranus, or something to that effect, and it’s making everyone a bit tetchy. I love astral outsourcing of personal accountability!

I toddled along again to the radio course last night for a session in broadcasting law. I have studied the concepts previously, so I thought I’d sit back and relax while trying not to gag from the nose-burning stench of someone’s tinea. My god, how the first warm night brings out the aroma of mating fungi, accumulated toe gap sweat and hints of low-budget parmesan. Gee, I might ask if I can host a wine tasting segment with my aptitude for describing yummy smells.

There was no time for dying in the reeking pong because Battle of the Idiots was being played to my left and right. We were discussing copyright and the brain-straining concepts of ‘if you don’t create something, it’s not yours to use without permission and, if you don’t own something, it’s not yours to use at all’.

So Contestant One pipes up and asks if he can play his Limewire downloads.

“Did you pay for the music?”

“No.”

“That’s easy. The answer is no.”

“Oh.”

Contestant Two didn’t take the hint that it was time to let it go rather than put his possibly smelly foot in his mouth.

He asked, “What about my .mp3 collection?”

Ooh, a collection!

“Did you pay for the music?”

“No.”

“Any format that’s downloaded without purchase doesn’t give you legal use, so, no.”

Contestant Two kept going.

“Does anyone check what we bring in?”

I hope he uses the illegal tunes guru persona when pitching a show concept to the programming committee. Less competition.

Crank-o-meter: paying artists for their work, what a concept

13 November 2008

Oh, no, it’s that time of year

6


The garish ropes of tinsel and plastic Santa-ghoul decorations … I can almost cope with. The green and red-dyed candy cane rawhide chews in the dog food aisle for our canine buddies … I can’t really cope with, but I do say a little prayer that no one buys that shit for their animals. The e-mail advertising the work Christmas party … hit delete and hope like hell the sender didn’t read receipt the recipients.

I like most of my co-workers and work productively with all of them, but come late October, the never-fucking-happy, could-do-it-better-but-that-would-mean-an-end-to-the-bitchin’ people come out of their cubicles and don’t shut up about how crappy it’s all going to be and don’t know why anyone bothers.

I know why: one year we went on a boat ride and one year in the future, any year, and I will wait … we’ll go on another boat ride and I’m going to push every single nay-sayer into the deep blue sea where the sharks take their lunch. Plonk, kerplunk, plonk. Sometimes I channel that fantasy and it keeps me going during business hours.

The optimistic but doomed ‘volunteer’ (“You’re good at organising things, you’ll be great,” was her manager’s delegation) has no chance of survival, regardless of the inclusive e-mail she sent asking for suggestions, and the top seven or so she sent us to vote on. The expensive options and evening events died in the arse and we agreed on a local winery that has a most reasonable fixed price menu with a variety of good wines by the glass.

Then it started (our bitchin’ brigade hides in the bushes until a decision is announced and then launches like a fully-loaded M60 machine gun with endless links of ammo stuffed in).

“Yewwwww, I don’t drink wine.”

“Errkkkk, I had lunch there once 15,000 years ago and I didn’t like the entrée.”

“Awww, It’s not in the direction of my house if I want to piss off early from you lot and go straight home.”

“Arghhh, Why aren’t we going on the boat ride?” (because you whinged when I organised that one, fucker)

“Nooo, I want to go to a pub and have a bowl of chips.”

It’s like a stadium rendition of Waldorf and Statler from The Muppets, but not funny and devoid of all wit. I can’t turn the channel over and the glares I receive are bloody annoying when I tell them not to go and enjoy the sandwiches at their desks.

Crank-o-meter: I’m going!

21 October 2008