A word to the wise

If you're a busker relying on people's good will for money, abusing them at the top of your voice and swearing at them as they walk past is probably not a good way to encourage others to give you money.

This goes double if you aren't exactly a virtuoso musician, like the guy at Flinders Street train station this morning. I'm just sayin'.

To the guy getting off the train

To the guy getting off the train this morning, complaining (with many a four-letter world) about having "dressed up" in a "shirt" all special-like, only for the weather to go cold... dude, that was no shirt, it was a tee-shirt. Shirts have buttons and a collar.

Overheard in the Impala household

Overheard in the Impala household this morning:

Is it just me, or am I hungry?

For the sake of my credibility, the speaker shall remain completely anonymous.

Charlie and Pirate Princess

For all those who thought I only ever blogged about politics, here's a people-watching post.

(Disclaimer: any resemblance to real people is probably an exaggeration.)

On Valentine's Day, Mrs Impala and I went out for dinner at the local pizzeria, where we enjoyed a nice seafood pasta and chicken salad. But that's not what I wish to write about today. I wish to write about our waitress.

There should be a term for somebody who is "just like" another person, despite looking and sounding completely different. The waitress was one of the people: she was just like Charlie from Heroes, despite being an Italian-Australian, olive-skinned brunette instead of an untanned, red-headed Texan. But there was something about the way she carried herself and her friendly manner that just screamed "Charlie". It's a type.

(Okay, so that isn't the most significant thing I've ever written about. I just wanted an excuse to mention Charlie from Heroes *grin*)

A few days prior to that, Mrs Impala and I went out for drinks with the Kitten and her beau, to celebrate his birthday and referee their latest flaming row. One of the people there was Kitten's flatmate, who I'll just call the Pirate Princess.

Mrs Impala has met Pirate Princess before, but I hadn't, and I can honesty say that my brain is still spinning. She's one of those amazing people who are a tangle of contradictions and contrasts and I for one didn't know whether to be impressed or to back away slowly.

Possibly a little of both is appropriate.

On the one hand I don't think she's especially made anything significant of her life, apart from possibly a mess, although she's still young and she's not in prison so it can't be all bad. On the other hand she's one of those over-achievers who cleans the house twice a day, and goes to the gym, and holds down a job, and bakes cakes, and makes her own mayonnaise, and dresses, and probably leather boots for all I know, and yet still has time to Par-tay!!! like an extra from Animal House. (And here I am, struggling to update my blog once a day.)

Under-achiever and over-achiever, at the same time.

Her body language says that she should have been born in the USA, where she would have run for Homecoming Queen and won by a landslide after bribing the entire school with muffins. As much as she's a dinkum Aussie (now there's a phrase I haven't heard for a long time! -- not since watching a Goodies episode) she carries herself like an American princess, and she doesn't have any time for false modesty. I can just imagine her as captain of the cheerleader squad. Oh. yes.

But she's not just all eye-candy, even with legs all the way up her legs. Pirate Princess is also fond of cleaning. Quite fond indeed. One might even say that cleaning is her passion.

At one stage during birthday drinks, Pirate Princess explained at length about the millions of microscopic bacteria crawling over every single inch of your skin. I was expecting her to launch into a full blown rendition of Weird Al Yankovic's Germs when she surprised me by suddenly declaring that people shouldn't use all those commercial disinfectants and cleaning products, because we need all that flora and fauna in and on our bodies for good health, and that excessive cleanliness leads to immune problems and asthma and other illness.

I'd hate to see what Pirate Princess considers excessive cleanliness.

All joking aside, what struck me was the fact that just when I thought I had her pegged (slightly off-square peg in a slightly off-round hole) she said something which caused me to completely rethink my opinion of her. I love it when stereotypes are broken and people are pleasantly surprising.

Guys on a train

It is amusing, the people you see on public transport.

There was Caprica Six's younger sister... Sideshow Bob's younger brother (not Cecil, the one they don't talk about)... the guy offering to swap Xanax for a cigarette... yes, people are strange and wonderful and terrible.

The other day, I noticed a pair of Aussie blokes chatting on the train. The older fellow, let's call him Bert, had left his bike leaning up against the train door, and when the train stopped at the next station the younger fellow (Ernie) opened the door to get on. Naturally the bike fell on him.

Okay, I thought to myself. Bert's overqualified for Village Idiot.

But as Ernie and Bert chatted, I had to revise my opinion. Ernie was nothing special -- just another hot-headed, tattooed 17-22 year-old with delusions of machismo. But Bert, well, if you get past the lack of vocabulary and the thick working-class Ocker accent, it was kind of like watching the older, experienced hunter gently and not-unkindly bring a young hunter back down to earth after his first kill. A nice antelope, he might as well have been saying, now let's talk about lions.

Ernie, full of Attitude, would make some sweeping claim, like "I hate all cops, they're all bastards, if I could get one alone I'd belt him in the face, I don't care who he is" [smash fist into palm of hand]. Then Bert would gently introduce another perspective: "Yeah, I know, some cops are bastards, but I'm still alive because of them" and then go on to tell the story of the time he was attacked and knifed in the street, and only survived because the police saved his life. While Ernie big-shotted himself for knowing tae-kwon-do, Bert talked about the street crime in Los Angeles and how lucky he was not to have been mugged, and how little good a black-belt is against hardened gang members with guns.

It just goes to show, people can be surprising.

Pink fluffy slippers

Conversation in the car tonight as Mrs Impala and I returned home from delivering a kitten to her home:

Me:	Was that woman jogging...?
Mrs Impala:	Yes she was.
Me:	She was jogging in fluffy...?
Mrs Impala:	Yes. Fluffy slippers. Fluffy pink slippers.
Me:	She was jogging in fluffy pink slippers. Well, it takes all kinds.
Mrs Impala:	Unfortunately.

The Smell

I think I've meet the closest thing in Australia to Foul Ole Ron.

There was a fellow at the train station this morning, heavily bearded but dressed in reasonably neat and clean-looking, if lower working class, clothes. His clothes might have been clean, but the rest of him wasn't. He stank so badly that the smell was deserving of a capital letter, like Foul Ole Ron's Smell.

I don't have the most sensitive nose on the planet -- there are probably rocks with a better sense of smell than me -- but the stench of this fellow was making me ill. The miasma he was giving off actually remained in the area for minutes after he walked to the other end of the platform.

I've been within smelling distance of people covered in honest sweat, and even dishonest sweat. I've been exposed to the smell of beggers, and people who don't wash during the height of Aussie summers, and folks whose diet includes much garlic or curry, and even one person who has a metabolic disorder such that, five minutes after stepping out of the shower, he smells like he's just run a marathon and been dipped in vinegar.

None of them came close to this bloke. For the first time ever, I think I understand what it must be like to be a bloodhound, and to be able to follow trails of scent through the air. If I wasn't trying to keep away from him, I could probably have tracked him blindfolded just by following the smell he left in his wake.

He didn't, however, say "Millenium Hand and Shrimp" or "Bugrit", so I guess he isn't the real Foul Ole Ron.

And for that, we can all be grateful.

The people you see in the big city

First, there was the young lady, 20-ish, with an obviously fake blonde dreadlock wig that looked all the world like an alien facehugger on her head.

Then there was the 30-something woman dressed in clothes that looked like a paedophile's wet dream. If she had been 17, she might just have got away with wearing them.

And then there were the two oh-so-daring goths, he with his oh-so-radical inverted cross around his neck, her with her nihlistic tee-shirt reading "Death is our future".

And last but certainly not least was the power-suited business man, looking like a cross between Gordon Gekko and Donald Trump on his way to a hostile takeover of an orphanage, walking a miniature poodle.

I saw all these people in the space of less than a city block.