Working hard or hardly working

The other day when I was at work I was at my computer cruising around facebook and reading news articles about football. Basically wasting time.
Moments earlier I had made the decision that I wouldn't be doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

As my luck would have it though my boss decided to walk past me literally two minutes after I made my decision to stop working.
He could see clear as day that I was on Facebook.

Instead of confronting the situation head on and confessing my plan to kill time for the rest of the afternoon regardless of what he thought, I quickly closed the window down and opened up some actual work to make myself appear busy.

This was a shameful attempt on my behalf. But it was easier to pretend as if I was actually working, rather than apologise for not.

I reminded myself of a fat kid on cross country day at school. One who would sprint away from the pack when the starters gun went off, then as soon as he turned the corner and was away from the eyes of the crowd would slow down to a walking pace.

He'd then continue at this speed for the remainder of the course until he came to the home stretch again where everyone would be able to see him. At this point the cunning fat boy would resume his sprint to the finish line and give off the illusion that he had just gone around a 3km cross country circuit at full speed, and hence, was trying really hard the whole time.

He doesn't fool anyone though. He's come dead last by some margin and it's obvious to everyone watching the race what the fat boy has done. He thinks he made it seem like he was putting in maximum effort the whole time when infact the little porker spent 95% of his time walking in a running race.

You see, it's easier for the fat boy to sprint away in front of people and then rest when they're not looking as opposed to starting and finishing the course at a steady pace.
He's going to come last regardless of the way he approaches the race, but sprinting in front of the crowd leaves him with some dignity still in tact.

Now the interesting bit in the story for me is that both myself and my boss are the metaphorical fat boys in a cross country race when we're at work.

He'd caught me not working, but instead of confessing to that I just opened up some work and unconvincingly gave off the impression that I was doing my job.
It was easier for me to pretend to work while he was watching, just as it's easier for the fat boy to run in the race while people are watching.

It's the explanation of our actions that people aren't bothered doing.

Now the bit that makes my boss the fat boy too is that he had without a doubt seen me screwing around on the internet and could have punished me or had words if he'd wanted.

But he's just as lazy as I am. So instead of saying "Back to work Brad", or "Don't let me catch you doing that again" he just stared at me.

Then what happened next was almost telepathic between the two of us. We stared at each other for a moment as if to mentally say "Let's both pretend this never happened."

I wasn't bothered apologising, or even appearing remorseful, and he wasn't bothered appearing to care that I don't do my job properly as he doesn't do his any better.

He then walked away and I carried on bludging for the remainder of the day as I imagine he did too.

We'd reached a mutual understanding without even having to exchange words and if I'm not mistaken this saga should make for a much happier working environment when I return from my holidays.

Lazy Song Writers.

What's going on with the music industry at the moment?

Every year there will be a minimum of 5 christmas themed movies that come out in the festive season, and any semi decent T.V show will have atleast one episode dedicated to the Christmas period aswell. The music industry though, they've decided to rest on their laurels. They had a couple hits with 'Jingle Bells' and 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer' so now they think the public won't want anything new.

It's been years since a memorable christmas tune has come out, yet none of the song writers out there seem to be bothered by this.
As far as the music industry is concerned it's perfectly acceptable to rattle off a handful of classics early on and then just retire, give up and think, "you know what, they've got 7 or 8 songs now, that'll do.... How many more could they want?".

Well I'm glad you asked music industry, because the answer is lots more. The movie makers in Hollywood didn't stop after Tim Allen rocked the silver screen in 'Santa Clause' so there's no reason for you to think that we will all be happy singing 'The Little Drummer Boy' and 'Frosty the Snowman' for the rest of our lives.

All these carolers and child choirs our their that I see spreading Christmas joy have a pained looked on their face. And it's not one of embarassment at the fact they are singing in public places, often poorly. No, they are sad because year after year they have to sing the same old worn out songs. They're crying out for a new song. Perhaps one about Rudolphs long lost cousin Rupert, who has really sensitive hearing, or 2 red noses that are twice as bright as the one of Rudolph.

See that, I've just come up with a knock out idea for a song on the spot. It wasn't hard to do, I was just willing to put in the effort. All it needs now is for a songwriter to add the lyrics, tune and melody before it's a classic.

I call on others to follow my example of impulse thinking so many many more great christmas carols can be born this year. We all deserve them.

When you hear your kids singing about 'Rupert the two red nosed Reindeer with ultra sensitive hearing' you'll know who to thank, so for that my Christmas loving friends, you're welcome.

Merry Christmas :)!!!

Too cool for school.

I recently decided to take greater control over my finances by documenting every single cent I spent on a spread sheet and then calculating where and when I was spending all my hard earned dollars.

To do this I first of all needed to learn how to use a spread sheet. Sounds simple enough, but I was initially lost until a crash course in the microsoft excel program had me ready to begin.

As it turns out, alot of what I was doing relied on the basic mathematics skills I should have learnt in school.
I was disappointed by this because throughout my 13 years of schooling whenever I was in maths class I lived by the mantra of "When will I ever need to use these skills in the real word"..

As it turns out, the answer is four years after you leave school and you want to start writing formulas into a spread sheet.

Well that's the answer in my case anyway. And now it has me questioning the relevance of every single class I did in school that I didn't pay attention in.

I'm now so restricted by all the clowning around I did in my teenage years.

I can't go sailing around the world, I played up in geography and would certainly get lost.

I can't start performing basic experiments at home, there's not a single thing from science class that I remember. An explosion would surely occur if I played with chemicals.

I fell asleep in Japanese and now only know one sentence. I won't be going to Japan any time soon now, and with that my dream of world travel fades.

And worst of all I can't travel back in time to any significant periods or events because I messed about so much in history. I don't know when any wars began or when travelling expeditions finished.
If I try go back in time to land on the moon before Neill Armstrong does I may end up being shot in the Korean War because I've gone to the wrong time and place. It's a real headache.

For now my only hope at getting a proper education relies on my future self attending night school to learn things properly, and then succesfully travelling through time, murdering me, disposing of my body and then assuming the identity of "present Brad" and doing all the experiments and travelling I'm currently not smart enough to do.

Good luck future Brad.

A funny state of being.

I was watching Tv at work earlier today when a person with weight issues was described as being "morbidly obese".

This amused me alot. And it wasn't because this person is having problems with their weight, as funny as that can sometimes be, but because they had reached such a new level of fatness that the simple term "obese" was no longer accurate enough to describe them.

It's like seeing an ugly person and thinking "wow, they're ugly" then five minutes later seeing someone who looks even worse and thinking "wow, they're incredibly ugly".

The thought of people crossing some kind of imaginary barrier whereby simple terms are no longer sufficient in describing them appeals to the inappropriately funny side of me, and I will always do an extra chuckle to myself when I hear someone described as morbidly obese, terribly ugly or disgustingly smelly.

Street Racer

Whenever I'm walking around the city and I see someone near me walking fast I automatically look out for a landmark about 10 metres ahead, be it a post office box or street sign, and then race them their.

I basically always win, due to my own power walking skills, and perhaps due to them not being aware we're racing, but nevertheless, it got me thinking about something.

Maybe people in the city aren't really in that much of a hurry when they're walking the streets. Perhaps there's just 1 person in a hurry, then a thousand other bored and immature people like myself racing each other.

There could just be a giant domino effect happening, whereby one persons competitive streak takes exception to somebody else walking fast, so he races that person, then somebody else sees that person walking fast so they then decide to speed up and start a race..... and so the pattern begins.

Next thing you know, 500 people are power walking through the city for no reason at all.

Perhaps all the lawyers, accountants, business executives and other suits storming around don't actually have that much important work to do, infact, they're so bored and underworked they have time to waste by secretly challenging people they don't to street walking races.

Next time I'm on my lunch break and I see someone fly by me I'm going to let them go.
If my theory's correct it's just going to take one person not getting caught up in the personal race game for the chain to break and the whole vibe around the city to mellow out a little.
And once it does, well you can thank yours truely!

Real Life Drama

I love a good drama. Not the scripted kind you see on TV. I'm talking real life drama, unscripted, inappropriate and so entertaining it's impossible to look away.

Arguments in the street are my favourite, tantrum throwing kids don't do it for me though. They're not old enough to know better, or understand shame.

It has to be adults; fighting in public but carrying on like they're at home alone, away from the judgemental eyes of yours truely.

The other morning when I was walking to work, early in the morning with people everywhere, a fight broke out at the train station between a girl and her mother and the girls boyfriend.

This fight was like a magnet. I couldn't turn away and I didn't care how obvious I looked as I watched on with a smile on my face.
To make myself look somewhat covert I took the broken phone out of my pocket and pretended to be sending a message, a lame attempt at justifying my reason for standing there and watching.

The girl ended up in tears, and while I know this is meant to be sad, I was over the moon. The perfect start to my day!
Watching an argument break out at the station, listening to people carry on in public and make a spectacle of themselves is one of my favourite things.

It's better than TV, no annoying characters, no commercial breaks, just live drama, right in your face.

It's the best!!!

All that Jazz

I walked out of my office at work the other day and could hear some jazz music being played really loud in the street. Intrigued, I followed the noise.

It lead me to a man sitting on the ground across the road. Cigarette in his mouth, speakers behind him, cd player by his side, tea towel with coins on it to the front.

This man was a "street performer"

I couldn't believe it.

I had no idea why people had given this person money for owning a cd. I own heaps of CD's, cassettes and dvd's aswell, you won't catch me in the middle of the city asking for a hand-out because I have possessions.

He wasn't showing any skill at all.

This kind of busking is disrespectful to people who juggle swords on a uni-cycle, breath fire, or less impressively paint themselves silver and pretend to be a statue.

These people are true street performers; too lazy to get a real job and not talented enough to break themselves into the proper entertainment industry where'd they become singers, dancers, or actors.

This CD playing guy needs to start being a little bit more innovative with his street performing otherwise his busking days will be numbered.

Money Bags

Over the weekend I was almost hustled in a book store.

I was inside one of the many 'Borders' stores around the place and after deciding to buy I book I took it up to the register and upon purchase the sales assisstant asked me if I'd like to pay an additional 10 cents for the bag "to carry my book in".


At first I thought nothing of it, and without a second thought said "Yeah, go for it"...

Seconds later, after realising I was buying a plastic bag I asked why I was doing this, and what the point was.

As it turns out I was helping Borders in their crusade to save the environment by purchasing plastic bags from them, one at time, at 10 cents a piece.

I was furious at this little con of theirs. Borders aren't doing anything commendable at all, they're mearly revenue raising under the guise of "Saving the Environment".

Now my anger at this isn't fuelled by my love of trees, or rainforests or even anything remotely close to that, as a matter of fact I don't really care about the environment at all.

Borders, if you actually care about the environment so much why don't you dip into your own multi million dollar pockets and start providing people with environmentally friendly bags to further help your nature loving crusade, rather than making money from the sales of bags that are harmful to the environment?

If you ask me you dont care one bit about the environment, you just thought this particular idea would be a good way for yourselves to make some money back on what is an otherwise dead expense for every other company who buys plastic bags for their customers to use for free.

Ten cents isn't alot of money, but it was the principle of the issue that made me angrier than the actual amount I was potentially being charged.

Don't try fool me into thinking that if I buy a plastic bag I'm doing a good deed, because all you're doing is lining your own pockets.

Saving the environment isn't your intention at all, and I'm not an idiot whose going to fall for your little trick.

Bone to pick

I was recently invited to join the 'Grow up Australia - R18+ rating for computer games' group by a facebook 'friend' the other day and as soon as I read what the group was about thought that there was nothing more pointless I could lobby for.

In a nutshell the members of this page are hoping they can get an R18+ rating on video games so they can see mature themes in their video games such as a cartoon nipple, or maybe hear the word 'fuck' spoken by a character.
Due to our current cencorship laws these mature themed games are being modified so they can be suitable for a younger audience.

Some of the quotes from this group such as "ADULTS are being denied the freedom to play games" is so stupid it's funny and "Grow up Australia", another quote used on this page is basically the most ironic quote imagineable given the context it's used in.

If you want someone to grow up, let it be yourself so you can stop pointlessly crusading for something as trivial as a video game rating system to be changed, on such a pointless medium aswell.

I'm not even going to pretend to know the wheelings and dealings of this country's law makers, but I very much doubt that any of them would be scrolling through the pages of facebook in search of inspiration for a reform in cencorship laws.

THE END.

(I'd just like to point out that I love playing FIFA on X-BOX and I'm awesome at it.... Very awesome.)

I'm not gay, I just like the theatre

For the second time in a matter of months I'm on here explaining how doing things that aren't "conventionally masculine" doesn't make me gay.

I do this because a recent visit to the theatre has now transformed me into a big fan of musicals.

I still like sport, and beers, but now I also like well coreographed dancing, and dramatic songs that are relevant to a story line or theme, sung by an individual, or an ensemble of well trained performers working in harmoney with each other and accompanied by an extravagant instrumental backing.

The musical I saw was called 'Wicked'. It's about the witches of Oz, from the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz", and I'd recommend to everyone I know, and even some approachable looking stangers that they go see it.

I really wasn't expecting much before I saw it, and if I'm being honest I only went because my girlfriend wanted to see it so I brought her the tickets and tagged along.

Now, however, I would happily visit the theatre anytime.

So to conclude my blog I thought I'd add one of the songs from the show that I liked. It starts to get good around the 2:00 minute mark and probably peaks at around 5:00 ish..

Enjoy :)