Poor Stevie

It’s been a wonderful Sydney sunday morning, the sun is shining, our sheets are crisp and dry and I had breakfast at bills in Surry Hills with Julia and my aunt Jenny. There have been three small blips on the Sunday radar however.

Dear Ben Mendelson,

Congratulations on having such a successful acting career. I love you in Love My Gay, and your cameo appearances in fast food ads. Generally, however, the polite response to being told you have to wait for a table is, ‘sure, my name is [ben] and I would like a table for three – me, my male friend with a ridiculous headband, and my small squeaky voiced lady friend over here.’ Rather than, ‘I can’t believe I have to queue outside a fucking restaurant for breakfast!’. Ben, Ben, Ben they obviously didn’t recognise you from your amazing few episodes in The Secret Life of Us. I did, but I still wouldn’t have made you breakfast after such a foul display of ego.

Best, Steve.

Dear shop-keeper lady at Grandma Takes a Trip,

Congratulations, you caught onto the whole vintage clothing thing early, and have made a name for yourself. I can op shop too, so don’t look at me as if I am a piece of dog shit that you brought in on your shoe.

Sincerely, Steve.

Dearest driver on the intersection of Ernest and whatever street,

Congratulations, your engine revs so hard it makes me think you have a big penis. Yes, the pedestrian light was red, but it had been green when I was about a quarter of the way across the road. You don’t need to beep at me, and your girlfriend doesn’t have to yell ‘red light’ out to me. I just ate an arseload (literally) of dairy that my body is ready to reject at any moment. It does not discriminate against leather upholstery, a nice paint job or your face.

Yours Faithfully,
Steve.

Otherwise, just a regular Sunday in Sydney.

There are so many people I hate. I really waste a lot of energy on them.

I had a strange movie experience over the weekend. I went to see a Swedish film called As it is in heaven. It was the type of film my scriptwriting tutor at uni would have raved about. It was so full of cliches, cheese and vomit inducing scenes. Here are some examples:

- The two main characters finally get it on towards the end (I’m not spoiling anything because if you go and waste your time/money on this piece of crap it is your own fault) when they realise they’re in love with each other. The male character lives in a schoolhouse where one wall is painted with little angels to represent all the children who were students there. After they have humped, she turns to him and says, ‘I think we should add another little angel to the wall’. Firstly, how does she know she’s knocked up? How does she know his sperm isn’t faulty? Secondly, as if any woman in her right mind would turn to her new lover and tell him she is up the duff. I can’t imagaine something that would make a man put his underpants on backwards faster. Thirdly, Sex is not ‘making love’. Sex is when two people rub their genitals together until one of those sets of genitals explodes.  

- The main male character is an ex-mega famous composer who moves back to his childhood village after having a near fatal heart attack. His whole aim in life is to make music to open people’s hearts. He starts to lead the little village choir and of course they become totally great and they go to a choir competition. He sees his old agent/mentor man and runs to him. The old man asks him, ‘why are you teaching these people?’ ‘what have you learnt?’ ‘where has your journey taken you?’. Show NOT tell.

- In the final scene, the composer man keels over, while his choir are standing on stage waiting for him. They all start humming, and making beautiful angelic noises, because yes that is what you would do if you were a choir and your conductor was missing. All of a sudden the audience all stand and start doing the same thing.  Seriously, why didn’t the film makers organise for the kids who worked at the cinema to come in half way through and bash us over the heads with big wooden mallets that said, ‘love’, ‘life’, ‘struggle’, ’peace’. ‘journey’, ’lessons’, ‘morals’, ‘journey’?  

This was a film that was nominated for Best Foreign film at the Oscars. Seriously, just kill me now. Do it. Now. 

When mum and I raced out of the cinema, it turned out we had been sitting in front of two teachers (who are married) from my old high school who I absolutely hated. The man was once my Studies of Religion teacher who spelt ‘Africa’ ‘Afirka’. Of course, they were both looking up atthe screen like they had just seen JC himself.   People are dicks.
I

The past couple of days have made me really dispair of the human race.

-  Australian Story on Monday was about the Morcombe family whose son Daniel went missing on the Gold Coast about three years ago, and it’s widely believed he was abducted by the side of the road while waiting for a bus. They did an Australian Story on the family about a year after it happened, and this was a catch-up episode about how they are doing and any progress in the case. The family have done amazing things like set up a foundation and worked with their community to make it safer for children. But, this year sometime, they got an anonymous call from a woman who said she had been in the car the day he was abducted and said she knew where he was buried. She went on to tell the family horrific details like how he was sexually abused, he had been made to witness two girls being raped, he was beaten up and eventually killed by being hit over the head with an iron bar.The police investigated the whole claim for months, and found it to be entirely false. Why would you do that to an already distraught family, who know nothing about their son’s presumed death and are grasping at anything. Why would you want to torture people who are already incredibly disturbed and screwed up?

- In the morning I was watching 9am with David and Kim (I could write an entire essay on these two, at first I hated him because I thought he was a jerk and now I hate her since she tried to attack Chris Masters over writing about Alan Jones’ homosexuality and then admitting to Masters she had only read ‘large chunks’ of his book) and they were interviewing David Hick’s lawyer Michael Mori. Kim started kind of attacking him saying he was going against American law, and how could he betray his army and didn’t he feel like he was unloyal to his country. I wanted to cry. Michael Mori, the amazing character he is, said that he feels Australians wouldn’t let America test out a new drug on an Australian that wasn’t safe for Americans, so why are we letting them test out a new legal system on an Australian that isn’t safe for Americans? Seriously, why does this woman get to interview amazing people and feel like its her duty to be hard hitting, and just quietly, offensive. David Hicks has nearly been in solitary confinement for a whole year. I rest my case Kim Idiot.

- I worked in the service desk yesterday. And although clearly this has nothing on being in solitary confinement for a whole year,  it was one of the worst days I have ever had in there. And that includes post-Christmas whinging. My very first customer was returning something she bought on credit card. Credit card companies request us to refund items back onto the credit card, pretty simple…

Me: explains this wildly ridiculous phenomenon. 
Woman: You have to do it for $12?
Me: Yes, sorry, your credit card company says we have to.
Woman: sighs all over the place.
Me: Asks to see her credit card to first make sure she’s using the same one, and to secondly check her signature and the credit card number, as is usual during credit card transactions
Woman: Why do you want to see it. I’m hardly going to put a refund onto a false credit card am I? *under her breath* stuuupid
Me: Well, sorry its part of my job. 

I had people whinging and whining at me all day long including a lady who yelled at me for picking up a pile of clothes to refund that weren’t hers. I have millions of refunds a day, sometimes I make simple mistakes. It’s not like a picked up her child and tried to shove it into the cash register.

These incidents seem pretty megre when I write them down. The thing is, I can’t remember a single time I have been outraged by something a salesperson/checkout chick has done. They accidentally give me the wrong change, I gently point it out to them. They forget to give me a docket, I kindly ask for one. They don’t ask me how I am, so I ask them how they are. They need to price check something, I wait patiently while they serve other people. I have perspective on life - its actually not that big a deal when someone asks to check my signature, or makes a mistake that takes one second to resolve. It makes me realise why the world is the way it is, because people want things to go exactly as they planned it, and even a slight variation will cause them to take out their semi-automatic in a shopping centre.

-  When I came home I saw on smh.com that a man had cut off the ears of his 8 week old puppy with a pair of scissors.