I’m sitting at my desk whilst two of my colleagues are having a conversation next to me.
Her – “It’s so big”
Him – “You’ll get used to it”
Her new phone had arrived and they were talking about the size of the screen.
But still…
The other day, whilst [while] walking down a supermarket aisle, I passed a couple having a quiet, yet heated conversation.
‘This should be interesting’, I thought, as I passed them….slowly.
“It’s e-a-t-E-n”, said the guy.
“Uh uh, no”, his other half said dismissively, “it’s e-a-t-A-n”.
“No baby, i’m telling you, it’s e-a-t-E-n”, he repeated with a slight chuckle in his voice.
This didn’t go down well with her.
Not well at all.
It was at this point she did that thing so many of my exes have done to me in the past when out in public; she raised her voice slightly in an attempt to embarrass her man in front of an audience….or, in this case, the slow, shuffling Brit who was taking far too much interest some nearby canned goods.
“Mmm-hmm, sure baby; whatever you say, but you is wrong![sic]“, she retorted, clearly convinced she wasn’t.
She was.
Besides, the correct spelling is ‘c-r-E-t-i-n’.
Today, during a meeting at work, one of my colleagues decided to share a top culinary tip with us. She’s a pretty smart cookie, so I was curious to know what mind blowing gastronomic trickery she was about to impart.
She smiled, opened her mouth and said:
“The best way to tell if your pasta is cooked properly is to throw it against the fridge and if it sticks, it’s cooked.”
Illogical
After a long pause and a few shared looks of concern for both her mental health and the quality of her spaghetti bolognese, I replied, “Or, you could, y’know, taste it”.
After a few nods of agreement at my introduction of sanity, and some repressed chuckles at the ludicrous nature of what she’d just spouted out of her mouth hole, she sat up in her chair and became very animated.
“I’m serious! It’s the best way to test if your pasta is cooked!”, she insisted.
She was wrong, of course.
“Ask anyone!”, she continued, “Google it!”.
This was a great suggestion because if it’s on the internet, it’s got to be true. Hey, did you know that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo?
So, as we argued the toss (see what I did there?), we decided to Google it and, lo and behold, there were a plethora of videos uploaded by NOT chefs showing that pasta, when thrown at a fridge or a window (or a flat screen TV, or a work colleague’s face) does, in fact, stick.
At this point we argued that under-cooked pasta will also stick because, y’know, starch.
She wasn’t having any of it.
So, as we all went back to our desks, still disputing the issue, she collared the first person we came across and pounced on him; “Hey, how do you test if pasta is cooked properly?”.
He paused for a moment, clearly not expecting to be asked this question today, and replied with, “You throw it at the ceiling and see if it sticks”.
“YES!!” she screamed, victoriously throwing her hands in the air, before turning to us with fingers pointing, “See, I told you! Ha!”.
So let me get this right, your only reliable and factual back up is someone who is clearly NOT Google, and also throws his pasta ON THE CEILING to check if it’s cooked? Not only does his kitchen probably resemble a cave full of stalactites, but he’s also an idiot.
Being half Italian myself, I know how to check if your pasta is cooked; you time it and you taste it; it’s simple really. Hurling your food at a kitchen appliance is not a sure fire way to check how cooked your meal is.
Plus, it’s fucking up my fridge magnets.
I know, I know….I haven’t posted anything recently and I’m sorry. Although, weirdly, I’ve had more email subscriptions in the last few weeks than a Nigerian prince has in a year.
Hmm.
Anyway, not one to complain, I thought I’d share a conversation I literally overheard at work about 10 minutes ago.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent.1
Dumbelina – “Hey, Tarquin! What’s the name of the ramen place we’re going to later?”
Tarquin popped his head up from behind his computer, clearly preoccupied with something he was watching or masturbating to.
“What?”
“The ramen place.”, she continued.
Tarquin stopped for a beat and blinked twice; “What ramen place?”
“The one we’re going to at lunch.”
Tarquin paused again, desperately tring to cling to a conversation he was clearly not understanding.
“What about it?”, he replied, rapidly losing wood.
“What’s the name of it?”
“Oh…”, he said, finally getting a grasp of the conversation, now that he no longer had anything substantial to grasp, “…I think it’s called [insert the name of the ramen place here because I can’t remember it for the life of me!]”
“OK, thanks T-Dog2; I just wanted to have a look at the menu.”
“Uh huh”, he mumbled as he went back to whatever it was he was doing to himself.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only with the tapping of keys and the faint clicking of a mouse button.
“Ah, here it is”, muttered Thumbelina as she found the website.
> click <
Pause
> click <
A longer pause (Jesus, some people surf the internet slower than a sloth wearing a heavy backpack, trekking through deep snow, wearing flippers)
“What the hell is this?”, she half said to herself, but I suspected was intended for those around her (including me) to ask, ‘What’s that?’.
No-one did.
She continued clicking.
“Deep fried octopus balls??”
I choked on my coffee.
“Ha ha ha…er, excuse me; sorry!”, I said through caffeinated coughing.
Now having an audience, she attempted to engage me in conversation, “Right?? Octopus balls!”
“Ha, yeah right”, I said wryly as I continued checking Facebook – er, I mean continued working – realising I had a blog post happening right now….live! I smiled to myself as I wondered what she would say next. Would that be it? Would that be the only amusing thing she’d say about the menu from ‘that ramen place’?
Nope.
She continued down the list muttering the occasional ‘Oh’, and ‘Eeuw’ before exclaiming, “Ooh, french fries!”.
Maybe the ramen place is called McDonalds?
“Tarquin, they have french fries! Oh wow, they have french fries with gravy!”
Tarquin didn’t care. He was laid back in his chair, sweating, and smoking a cigarette.3
We’ve all been there
1 – Stupid
2 – OK, maybe I’m embellishing here a little bit.
3 – See 2
I was just on Facebook and one of those annoying links came up that challenged:
‘If You Know The Meaning Of These 16 Words, You Have A 150+ IQ’
“OK, I’ll bite“, I thought to myself.
So I bit and clicked the link.
I got all 16 words correct (naturally) and was heralded a genius (obviously), which was nice. But to be honest, it was pretty easy…any idiot could have done it.
Then I noticed the website name:
Uh oh.
Wait….did this website cause me to have a sexist thought? It most certainly did. For the tiniest of nanoseconds, my thought was ‘So, is it easier because it’s aimed at women?‘
That’s not a good thought to have. It’s also not a great thought to share on a blog either!
Hmm, maybe my I.Q. isn’t as high as I thought.
I would like to say at this point that I’m not sexist. If anything, the website was sexist by pandering to its readers, right?
Right?
>crickets<
Maybe this clickbait quiz was designed to have men go through what i’m going through and question their views on the better sex?
(Yes, I’m grovelling for forgiveness here).
But in all seriousness, I’m not a sexist guy; women are awesome.1 In fact, now I think about it, all my girlfriends have been female.
Every single one.
My wife’s a woman too. I checked.
I’ve never considered women to be inferior to men (except for their inability to see the difference between DVD and BluRay picture quality which is SO annoying! Come on….look at the crispness of the image and how clear each pixel is when you….no, no I’m not going to get into this now), so was the website subtly imposing sexism on me?
Was I sexist by proxy? Was it designed to make us men think about sexism? Was the quiz actually difficult and I am, in fact, a monumental genius?
Whatever the case, I’m sleeping on the sofa tonight when my wife reads this.2
1 – Except a couple of my ex-girlfriends; they were a fucking nightmare!
2 – Not really. My wife is not that type of person. She’s amazing! 3
3 – Yep, still grovelling.
My wife and I work the same shift at the same company, and that shift starts at 5am. As a result, we’re usually very sleepy during the drive into work. I have to say, it makes the other drivers nervous when they look over and see us both snoring, heads back, drooling.
This morning my wife felt the desire for Starbucks coffee and she asked[1] if we could stop at a drive through [or ‘drive-thru’ for all my American chums out there].
Of course.
We pulled up behind a car already in the queue [line] ordering their coffee. Soon enough, after a brief 3 hours, the car finally moved and we rolled up to the microphone.
The speaker crackled into life.
“Welcome to Starbucks”
“Hi”, we both replied in sleepy unison.
“Yeah, we’re actually not open right now.”, came the lacklustre response in that inimitable style that made it sound like a question.
“Oh….OK. Never mind, thank you”
We looked at each other, shrugged and started to drive off. Unfortunately we couldn’t go far as the car in front of us was at the next window waiting for their coffee.
We couldn’t get around them and, despite my wife’s insistence I beep my horn and ‘urge’ them to move the fuck out of the way, I decided to reverse back along the drive through lane as there were no cars behind us…..at 4:30am on a Monday.
I wonder why.
Anyway, as we reversed back past the microphone/speaker we could hear the woman babbling something over the intercom, so we stopped.
“Welcome to Starbucks, can I take your order?”
We looked at each other again, but this time in total confusion. My wife leaned across me and said, “Wait….I thought you said you were closed.”
The speaker crackled back into life, “No, I said we we’re not open right now.”
Wait, isn’t that the same thing?
The speaker continued to crackle with attitude as the woman told us why they weren’t open yet; something about waiting for something or whatever….I don’t know. Anyway, her tedious tale concluded with her asking if she could take our order.
Maybe it was the fact we were half asleep and devoid of caffeine, but she made no sense whatsoever.
So if you’re reading this and you’re not from the USA, take note…..’Not Open‘ and ‘Closed‘ mean different things over here….apparently.
Just like ‘Starbucks Barista‘ and ‘Testy Imbecile‘.
He he, ‘Testy’
[1] Demanded
It’s Sunday and I’m at work. It’s actually my scheduled day to work, so this isn’t a ranty post about having to work weekends and the world can lick my sweaty bumhole.
Sorry.
Instead, this is a post about the baffling and idiotic mindset of one of my friends and colleagues who is also here today.
So, for context, we have a large bistro on campus here at work which offers all sorts of foods, drinks and dubious stains and spills on the floor. Usually, when I take my lunch, I head down to the bistro and then text my colleague (let’s call her Numpty) and let her know what free soups they have on offer that day. She then replies and lets me know which she’d like and I take one back to her.
I’m simply awesome like that.
Well, being a Sunday, there was only one choice of soup instead of the usual three. Today’s soup was beef chilli. Yes, I know it’s not technically a soup, but it resembles a soup more than a barrel of squashed frogs.
Actually, squashed frog soup sounds pretty good.
Anyway, when I got down there I sent her a text. In fact, here is the ACTUAL conversation we had (my comments are in yellow).
There’s a lot of love between us
I deserved it.
But then again, so did she. I mean, all she had to do was type ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. In fact a simple ‘Y’ or ‘N’ would have sufficed.
This is why she’s a twat.
Last night I decided to get my hair cut because I was starting to look like 1973.
So I drove to the barber shop, spied a parking space and parked in it. The space was a bit tight (smirk), but I slipped in with ease (even smirkier)
Exciting story so far, right?
I got out of my car and started walking towards the barber shop when I heard a voice behind me.
I whirled around[1] and saw a little old lady sat behind the wheel of one of the cars I just pulled up next to. She smiled at me and repeated whatever indecipherable thing she said.
“Pardon?” I said to her, very politely and Englishly.
She cleared her throat and tried again, “You a good driver! I seen 3 people try and park there and give up. You a good driver!”[sic].
“Thanks!” I replied smugly.
Little did she know I often fuck up parking my unnecessarily long American sedan like a cock. Yet I STILL do better than the local drivers here in Las Vegas.
As they say…in a land of twats, the dick is king[2].
Llllllllike a glove!
[1] Who whirls? I just turned around normally.
[2] No-one says this.
Just coasting on the back of my last post; the woman on the exercise bike next to me is having a full blown, animated conversation on her phone. She’s panting heavily which I suppose is… sexy?
Unlike me, she’s pedalling very fast and sweating lots.
Also unlike me – who is able to compose this post whilst pedalling – she’s lacking the appropriate concentration necessary to multitask and has missed the pedals twice, nearly giving herself some complimentary handlebar dentistry.
Heavy breathing? Sexy.
Heavy bleeding? Not as much.
Period.
I got to work a bit early this morning, so took the opportunity to make myself some coffee and toast.
Whilst I was waiting by the toaster another employee came over to put some Tupperware’d nastiness in the microwave. We smiled and performed the customary “Good Morning”, the optional “How’s your day going?” and (as I found out very quickly) the unnecessary “I’m utterly fucked”.
I must say, her face indicated that maybe, just maybe, I may have gone a tad too far; but she asked….so….
Anyway, she went back to zapping her box of whatever and I went back to waiting for my toast to ‘Shadunk‘ out of the toaster, when another employee walked by and shouted out to my new ‘friend’.
“Yoo Hoo gurl!” (not a typo; she said ‘gurl’, not ‘girl’)
“Oh, toodle-oo!”
Face palm. That’s ‘goodbye’, you twat.
‘Ding!‘
‘Shadunk!‘
Oh, thank fuck.
Last week I was walking behind an American woman who was holding hands with her young daughter and talking to two young French girls. She was asking them about France and how to say certain words in French.
As I got closer I heard:
“So, how do ya’ll say ‘Camden‘ in French?”
There was a pause as the two girls looked at each other bemused, and then turned slowly back to the woman.
One of them replied:
“Er, Camden eez ze name of a market in London, no?”
Woman “Uh huh” said the woman, not getting it; “So how do y’all say it in French?”
There was another pause as the French girl tried to decipher if there was something she missed, or a meaning she hadn’t considered…or if it was simply a stupid fucking question.
Finally she looked back at the woman and gave the only answer she possibly could.
“Camden”
The French have another word that’s the same as English.
Imbécile.
I’ve just seen a woman, easily over 300 pounds in weight, wearing a t-shirt that read:
Work Hard
Train Hard
Live Hard
More like “Eat Hard”.
And then eventually “Die Hard”.
Then again, replacing the ‘H’ with an ‘L’ would’ve worked too.
Isn’t it a bit contradictory to produce that article of clothing in any size larger than, well, Large?
Unless of course its purpose is to inspire people to get fitter and lose weight.
She was sat outside a ‘Red Robin’ burger joint waiting to go in.
What do you think?
I’m currently sat in the waiting room of the physical therapy clinic whilst my wife undergoes another session following her double ACL knee surgery a few weeks back.
Whew, that was a long sentence.
Anyway, I’m sat here reading crap on my phone (as usual) when I felt the prescence of someone sit down three seats to my left.
A miniscule fraction of a nanosecond passed before I heard a southern American drawl aimed in my general direction.
“That’s a lot of tattoos”
I chose to pretend I hadn’t heard her and kept reading whatever bollocks I was reading on my phone, knowing full well she was talking to me.
How do I know? Well, because:
A) I have two full tattoo sleeves, and
B) I’m the only other person here.
I could feel her looking at me awaiting some sort of response, like a gormless child waiting for a firework display to begin; slack jawed and unblinking.
The act of ignoring someone does not come as easy to me as many would think, so I succumbed to literal peer pressure and looked up at her old, heavily tanned, heavily cheekboned (due to one surgical procedure too many) face.
I gave her a fake smile.
“A lot of tattoos huh?” she pointlessly asked, in case I hadn’t caught the gist of her last unwelcomed comment.
For a second I toyed with the cliché response of “Oh shit, where the fuck did THEY come from??”, but instead I lifted one arm, admired it for a moment and chuckled a friendly(ish) reply:
“Yeah. And a lot of pain too.”
That should be enough to end this unwanted conversation, I thought.
Wrong.
“Wow, gee whizz”, she continued with me now back to my phone, attempting to re-ignore her.
She then paused for a few seconds to, I assume, scan all my artwork.
Then she let out an audible shudder.
Have you ever heard someone audibly shudder?
What kind of reaction is that?
It’s impossible to describe the sound with the written word, but it was like she had spiders suddenly running up and down her sinewy but saggy, slightly hunched, leathery body.
Silent shudder.
At lunch yesterday, a few of us went to a local eatery to spend time and catch up.
During our conversation we were talking about a recent work funded night out at a local nightclub
*cough* Hakkasan nightclub at MGM Grand *cough*
Anyway, one of our party was telling us how much she had drunk that night, concluding her tale with my favourite sentence of 2016 so far:
“I was forced to double fist.”
She meant this…
But the action of half choking on my drink, gasping for air and laughing like a busted lawnmower, indicated to her that maybe…just maybe…I thought she meant something else.
I had to share this, it was two good to pass up.[1]
Stuff like this doesn’t just make my day, it makes my hole weak.[1]
[1] not typos.
I’m currently at work and I’ve just been to make myself a mug of coffee.
Here’s what happened.
I poured the coffee, added sweetener (I try and avoid sugar from a health point of view, despite the fact that sweetener is nothing but chemicals…but hey, less calories right?), and opened the fridge to get a carton of milk.
One of my colleagues was pouring herself a coffee, saw me add the milk to my coffee and said “How very British”.
I looked at my coffee confused for a moment, then at her, then back to my coffee. What’s very British? Coffee? Er, I think you’ll find that’s a very American thing.
Then she placed her cup under one of these bad boys…
…and starting pumping her beverage with Hazelnut…erm…’cream’? Is it cream?
(Shrugs) Who knows?
I smiled at her as she pumped 6 doses of this stuff into her coffee and said “I used to use that until I saw the calorie content. That’s why I went back to using milk”
She looked at me blankly for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to comprehend what I’d said or if she was recuperating from having to count all the way up to 6.
She eventually replied with “And you guys put milk in your tea, right?” as she curled up her nose in disgust.
“Yes we do. Actually it’s only you guys who don’t”, I said, a little defensively.
There was a pause.
“Yeah”.
She had clearly lost her way in this conversation and went back to stirring her mug of Hazelnut ‘cream’ with a bit of coffee in it.
As I walked away I turned back, smiled, and said, “Tea with milk is epic”.
She laughed.
I don’t know why.
I don’t think she knew either.
I had an interesting telephone conversation with a lady customer that went like this:
Customer – “Hi. I need a new shipping label. The one you sent before couldn’t be scanned by UPS.”
Me – “Really? I’m sorry to hear that.”
Customer – “We need another one to print off.”
Me – “Actually, you can just reprint the same label.”
Customer – “No, we’ve already printed that one, and it was no good. It was all distorted.”
Me – “Distorted? in what way?”
Customer – “Well, you know how it looks when a typewriter ribbon is old? That’s how it looked”
It’s worth noting here that she used the words ‘typewriter’ and ‘ribbon’.
I had a feeling this conversation was not going to get easier.
Me – “Oh, I see, so the ink was faded?”
Customer – “Yes and UPS said they couldn’t scan it properly, so could you send me another label that’s not so faded please?”
I felt myself drowning.
Me – “Actually, if the ink was faded it’s likely to be your printer.”
Customer – “No, it’s not our printer, it’s the label.”
Me – “I’m happy to resend you the label, but you will encounter the same problem as it’s a digital image. I suspect it will still come out all faded and distorted.”
Customer – “No, it won’t this time.”
Me – “How do you know?”
Customer – “This time I want you to email it to my husband’s computer as it’s clearer on his screen than on mine, so it will print better.”
Yesterday I needed to go to the DMV to begin the process of applying for a driving licence [license].
To all my fellow Brits across the pond, the DMV (Department Of Motor Vehicles) is the American equivalent of the DVLA (Driving and Vehicle Licencing Authority) but with more attitude, sneering and total disregard for anyone and everyone.
We had, in fact, been there the day before at 7:30am which was half an hour before they opened. However, the queue [line] was already about 80 people deep, so we said ‘fuck it’ and decided to go shopping for some delicious home comforts at the international market.
I’ll write about this another time no doubt.
So yesterday we arrived at the DMV at 7am; a full hour before they opened, We were still about 40th in the queue [line]. Luckily the sun wasn’t beating down on us making me sweat through my shirt, so that was nice.
It’s amazing watching Americans queue up. Us Brits are renowned for our amazing ability to queue. If it was an Olympic sport we’d win gold every time, next to moaning about the weather and apologising [apologizing].
The queue was snaking around (what the Americans call) the ‘planters’ and getting quite long.
This is a real satellite photo…honest.
Now, let me ask you a question; where would you join the queue? I mean, REALLY think about it…where would you stand if you turned up and saw all these pink dots, er, I mean people?
At the end of the queue maybe?
Well, some Americans decided to go down this route…
Dumbfuckery at its finest
I seriously couldn’t believe the nerve of these people. They were blatantly attempting to join the queue by giving the snake a second tail.
My wife and I were stood right on that corner, so she politely and with an air of “don’t you fucking dare” pointed out that the back of the line was behind all these increasingly angry faced people. She may have appeared like she was smiling, but I think a more accurate description would be ‘snarling’.
It amazed me that these twats looked genuinely surprised; like i’d kicked them in the balls without warning.
These people didn’t actually realise what they were doing, which isn’t reassuring when you consider they all have driving licences.
Anyway, once the offices opened we all shuffled in to….well, the same queue, but indoors. At least it was air conditioned, which was nice.
We got to the desk in no time and was greeted by the clerk who took our details including our phone number (the DMV staff all seem perplexed that we didn’t have a mobile [cell] number and had to take what’s called a ‘home number’). We were then given each a form to complete and told to take a seat in the waiting room until the last four digits of our phone number was called over the tannoy. The clerk said it wouldn’t take long as there were only 2 people in front of us.
Great.
So we sat down and completed our forms. And we sat.
And we sat.
And we sat.
We ignored the dickhead sat next to the ‘please wear headphones’ sign with his phone blaring out YouTube videos.
And we sat.
People came and people went, but we still sat there waiting for our number to be called.
After an hour my ‘smiling’ wife went and rejoined the bastard queue from hell and was told by another desk clerk that our number HAD been called and we missed it.
Er, no we fucking didn’t.
It seems that your number is only ever called out once. If you miss it you have to rejoin the queue and register it again.
Apparently they also text you to notify you that your number has been called.
No cell phone number, assholes…remember?
Our number must’ve been called in the 4.2 seconds it took to walk from the front desk to the waiting room.
There was no way we could’ve heard it because they don’t have the same tannoy speakers announcing the numbers anywhere else BUT the waiting room; not even in the toilets!
That makes for a nervously quick visit if you’re on your own.
Anyway, our number was FINALLY called half an hour later and we went over to desk 12 and took a seat.
The woman behind the desk – let’s call her Bitchelina – barely looked up at us and said “So what do you want?”
Not “How can I help?”, or “What can I do for you?”. No, she went with “So what do you want?”
My wife explained that she needed to renew her licence, change her surname [last name] to her married name and change her address. I got halfway through explaining that i needed to apply for a US licence when Bitchelina barked, “Why did they send you to ‘Admin’?”
“I don’t know, we were just told to….”
“You shouldn’t have been sent to ‘admin’. Why did they send you to me?!”
How the fuck should we know? Ask the person who sent us; don’t sit there and talk to us like we’d somehow decided it would be funny to come over to your desk and fuck up your day.
Anyway, Bitchelina huffed and puffed about it, moaned openly to her colleagues that we were in the wrong place, stopped processing us on several occasions to socialise with colleagues and generally made it blatantly clear that we were an inconvenience to her.
She was rude, abrupt and only seemed to ask questions that consisted of a maximum of two words.
I had two words for her, and one of them was ‘off’.
(The other was ‘fuck’…in case you were wondering).
Anyway, once I had proven I am a real human being by providing a passport, US visa, proof of address (which still had to be verified by my wife), bank details, birth certificate, blood and urine sample, a cheek swab, the big toe on my left foot and my unborn first child, she thrust the paperwork I needed and grunted in the direction of the testing office.
Before I left I asked her to clarify if the driving portion of the test accepted hand over hand steering, or if it had to be hand to hand (like in the UK).
She didn’t know.
Of course she didn’t.
And that was probably my fault, somehow.
At this point I realised just how true the portrayal of the DMV is in TV and films. The staff there are truly awful. It’s where personalities go to die.
Anyway, I went to the testing office, handed over my paperwork and was allocated a machine to sit at for the written part of the driving test. The machine resembled a cash machine [ATM] complete with touchscreen.
I sat down, pressed the ‘Start’ button and the screen advised there would be 50 questions, of which I had to answer 40 correctly.
No problem; I’d read the Nevada State driving manual and knew all there was about the rules of the road, what the road signs meant, how to navigate the road markings and how the traffic lights [traffic signals] work.
Question 1 – What is skidding?
Oh come on, this is going to be easy!
Question 2 – What do you do at a red light?
This is going to be a walk in the park!
Question 3 – How heavy should a baby be before they can sit facing forward?
Er, what? Ok, no problem…I can skip it and come back to it.
Question 4 – If you suspect a driver is drunk, what telephone number should you call?
How is that relevant to driving? I took a guess. A wrong guess.
Question 5 – If you have an accident, other than the driver, who else should fill out an accident report?
a) A passer by
b) Other passenger(s)
c) The registered owner
Well duh, it’s obviously the other passengers as they would’ve been there at the time of the accident. Nope, it’s the registered owner.
What??
Did you know that you can also lose your licence if you’re convicted for graffiti? Nothing to do with vehicles or driving, just the simple act of defacing property with paint.
I didn’t either.
Needless to say, I failed the test.
Bollocks [gosh darn it]
Not only did this mean I felt stupid – considering it had probably been passed by people with an inability to understand the simple act of queuing – but it also meant I had to resit the test. Imagine my joy when the ‘examiner’ (the woman sat behind the counter scratching her arse [ass] and probably scrolling through her Facebook news feed) told me that I can only do one resit a day.
You mean I have to come back again tomorrow?
Shit.
So that evening I read the booklet cover to cover – including the date it was published (July 2014) and the number of staples used (2) – because i’d realised that the written test wasn’t about learning the rules of the road, but testing if you’d actually read the booklet. If it’s in the booket, they’ll test you on it.
This morning my wife and I went back to the DMV at around 10am, queued up, got snarled at by the desk clerk, gave our telephone number, ran to a seat in case we missed our number being called out, paid the resit fee and went into the testing room to be sat in front of the ATM again.
This time it didn’t ask questions about babies and telephone numbers, naturally.
This time I passed.
Then I was directed to a desk where Bitchelina’s cousin was sat. She told me I had to wait until the 23rd of September for the driving portion of the test. That’s a month away!
Then she sternly said “You can come along any day and get yourself on the standby list, but there’s no guarantee you will get a test and you can be sat here all day”
I wanted to make sure this option was in ‘addition to‘ having a scheduled test, rather than ‘instead of‘, so I replied, “Oh, so I CAN have the test earlier than the 23rd September?”
She repeated, “You can come along any day and get yourself on the standby list, but there’s no guarantee you will get a test and you can be sat here all day”
That’s not really answering my question.
“So it IS possible to attempt a standby test even if I have a scheduled test in September?”
Without flinching she replied, “You can come along any day and get yourself on the standby list, but there’s no guarantee you will get a test and you can be sat here all day”
Hopefully you’ll get the movie reference, and not photo-sensitive epilepsy.
Each telling of this sentence became more and more insipid; like a piece of fruit gradually decomposing.
Although this particular piece of fruit was bitter to begin with…like a lemon! Yes, she resembled a rotting lemon.
Hmm, that’s not a sentence I was expecting to write when I began this post.
So that was my first (and technically second) experience of the DMV. It was a service so far removed from the expected level of customer service you get in the USA.
Maybe they should work on tips like they do in restaurants, then the DMV would be a delightful place to visit. But until then, they will remain to be a bunch of Demeaning, Monstrous Vaginas.
(See what I did there?)
I will no doubt write about the driving part of my test when it occurs. It may be on the 23rd of September, or any day when I can get myself on the standby list, but apparently there’s no guarantee I will get a test and I can be sat there all day.
One of the girls I work with always wears fake lashes. It looks like her eyes are wearing baseball caps.
The other day I dared her to come to work not wearing them, so today she’s done exactly that.
She looks…well…no different, actually.
Her natural lashes (which I believe I am saving from extinction) are long, so she looks just great without those massive canopies keeping her face shaded from the sun.
Goodbye fake tan.
Then she came out with this gem:
“I do feel like I’ve got bigger eyes today”.
Brilliant.
However, this isn’t the first time she’s come out with a random statement. In fact, one of my friends in the office who sits next to her is compiling a book of them.
Here is a sample of what he has so far.
“I have pissed myself before; I was under the influence”
“Why can’t I work from home? I couldn’t work from home because I wouldn’t work!
“Is the Caribbean in Thailand?” (We work in travel)
“What would 50% of the holiday cost be? Oh yeah, half!”
“What class are they flying? Pre minimum Economy?”
Her – “Are you still with the mum?”
Customer – “No, I’m not”
Her – “Aww, ok; are they still her kids though?”
“I actually think I’m in a music video today”
“I can’t wait to shave”
“When you say ‘Afternoon’, how weird is that?”
“Don’t you think oranges are weird? Like, the way they grow. The world is a wonderful place Billy”
“It’s the one bedroom apartment equilavent….equilavent…..EQUILAVENT!”
“About a month ago I shit myself. It was so annoying because it was just after a shower.”
“O.M.G., I think I’m getting fingered by a ghost!”
How can I compete with this comedy gold?
The interesting thing to note is that this girl is actually quite smart. She’s quick to learn and very inquisitive…she’s just a bit of a ditzy twat at times.
Bless her.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. To be honest it’s been a hectic couple of months which I will no doubt write about in the coming weeks.
Aren’t you excited?
Anyway, to ease myself back into the habit of writing, I just wanted to share an interaction I had the pleasure of witnessing on the Tube this morning.
There was a couple. I would say they were mid-to-late twenties and very posh.
How did I know? Well…
He had immaculately combed back (and yet thinning) hair with glasses and was wearing cufflinks. Yes, he was one of those people who actually wear cufflinks to work.
She had straight strawberry-brunette hair with enough make-up to choke a rabbit. You could still see her freckles which gave her that posh ‘England Rose’ look. Her handbag looked stiffer than a Scotsman’s drink.
They were both wearing those long expensive coats you only ever see in magazine adverts worn by good looking people walking and laughing under trees in autumn.
Anyway, as the train filled up I was herded in their direction until I was stood inches away with my back to them.
This, they had decided, was the time to engage in a very posh and plummy conversation.
“I say, what time will you get to work?” she asked him with a voice that emphasised the ‘h’ in ‘what’.
“Not long now”, he replied, lacking any hint of enthusiasm; “I am so frightfully tired”.
“Mmm, yes me too” she said; “I ordered some new contact lenses but I ordered the wrong ones and they’re actually making me tireder”
There was a pause.
I’m sorry; did she just say ‘tireder’? That can’t be right. Surely it’s ‘more tired’?
A few seconds passed.
“Do you know; I don’t think tireder is a word” she said, emphasising the ‘h’ in ‘word’.
I smirked.
Neither is ‘twattiest’, I thought to myself, but I think I’m going to use it anyway.
This morning I saw a man on the London Underground accompanied by his wife who was dressed in a Burka.
Some people unfairly assume that, being a Muslim, he is probably up to no good like bombing the train or something equally insane.
This is, of course, ridiculous. It is an irrational fear created by the few extremists out there ruining it for the rest.
I have to say that I disagree with the oppressive nature of the burka, despite the excellent UV protection it provides. Having said that, I do have Muslim friends and my experience has taught me that their religion is no more or less peaceful than any other (except maybe Buddhism).
Also, this dude had his wife with him. There isn’t a man alive (or dead) who wants to be greeted by 72 virgins with his wife!
Unless that’s their thing.
Which I doubt.
So I wasn’t worried.
However, this guy was wearing a T-shirt that wasn’t doing him any favours whatsoever.
It read:
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
I must not think bad thoughts
Hilarious.
There were some uncomfortably sweaty people on the train this morning.
Head In A Blender 