If I'm not Me, who is??

Some time ago in this column I mentioned that I had ‘Googled’ my own name and discovered that there are several other ‘Me’s’ around the world doing wonderful and interesting things (unlike Me Me who leads a pathetically boring existence whereby no one would probably ever bother Googling Me).

Well anyway, they were a many and varied bunch, those other Me’s — from a champion bridge player to a mathematician (I can’t tell you how ironic THAT is, but I’ll bet my Form 2 maths teacher would have a giggle).

But anyhoo, I thought the matter of alternate Me’s had finally been laid to rest until recently I was out of town on a shopping trip and intending to meet a friend for drinks afterwards.

Wandering around a large department store, I was busily examining dog toys (as you do when you're a tragic dog owner) when suddenly over the loudspeaker I heard my name being called!

What the??? I thought. Why would they be calling me to the Service Desk? Had I dropped my purse? Had my friend arrived early and was she looking for me? Had she never heard of mobile phones? Did I even have mine switched on? How did she know I was there in the first place? Was I late for drinks? Is there really a God? If so, does he do crossword puzzles? If so, does he ever get them wrong (being omnipotent and all)?

All of these thoughts whirred swiftly through my head upon hearing my name being summoned nasily. (Okay, I admit I didn’t really think about God and the crosswords but it’s something I have wondered about occasionally).

Anyway, I was about to hurry over to the Service Desk and announce myself when it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t the only Me in the store. I furtively glanced in the direction of the Service Desk to see if there was anyone looking expectantly for a Me, but all was quiet and no one seemed to be frantically in search of anyone. I decided that perhaps I had misheard the name, so went back to my doggie shopping and eventually prepared to leave the store.

However, on my way through the checkout, curiosity got the better of me so I asked the cashier if there was, indeed, someone bearing my moniker who worked at the store. She glanced at the name on my credit card and smiled.

“Yeah, she works here! Would you like to meet her?”

“Is she tall, slim and gorgeous?” I wanted to ask, hoping that at least one Me in the world had fared well in the fab looks department.

Instead I said; “I’d like to meet her ….. but I’m afraid she might flatten me.”

Why? Because I had suddenly remembered that this alternate Me may have had to contend with some flack about Me Me and my (infamous?) Kitchen Philosopher column. It had never occurred to me that someone else might be being blamed for all the craziness.

The cashier eyed me in bewilderment as I quickly gathered up my goodies and made a hasty retreat.

“Give her my regards!” I called over my shoulder. “Oh, and tell her sorry!”

“What for?” called the cashier.

“If she reads the local rag, she probably already knows!”

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Getting Abreast of Science

A few weeks ago, a friend who was visiting Canada sent me a very strange text message.

“Once again you’re ahead of your time,” it read. “Today here in Canada it’s ‘Boobquake Day”.

I wondered what on earth he was talking about so I quickly looked up ‘Boobquake’ on the web. I discovered that, in response to claims from a religious cleric that women who show cleavage are causing earthquakes by their provocative behaviour (or words to that effect), a young Canadian uni student had set down a challenge.

Her idea was to enlist the help of women everywhere to scientifically disprove the theory that seismic activity was linked to flashing a bit of ‘cleave’. While her boob-atious participants were encouraged to keep it tasteful, the message was clear; put the puppies on parade and let’s see if the earth moves!

However, while I’m sure the earth certainly may have moved for many of the happy male observers of the Boobquake phenomenon, the scientific evidence suggested no such movement on the part of the world’s tectonic plates. In fact, a scan of earthquake activity on Boobquake Day showed the seismology of the day could have barely snapped a bra strap, let alone dumped tall buildings into the bubbling earth’s core. Study complete. Cleavage clearly off the hook.

But you still might be wondering why my friend had linked me to a national day of boobology? And the answer is that, some months ago I had been involved in my own little cleavage incident.

While testing some video-conferencing equipment prior to a meeting, I was seated in front of a video screen while colleagues were beaming in ‘on-screen’ from Melbourne. As we tweaked the equipment – adjusting the sound and lighting – my Melbourne colleagues commented that it was a bit dark at my end and suggested I needed some more light in the room. I noted that the overhead lights were already on, so I did the logical thing and leaned forward over the screen to flick open the venetian blinds.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to me that the camera for the video equipment was actually located at the top of the screen (upon which I was casually leaning my chest as I adjusted the blinds). Thus by the time I stepped back from my chord-twirling activities and looked back at the screen, I found my city colleagues covering their faces in horror and laughing hysterically. Apparently they had just received an unbidden and inappropriately intimate guided tour of my C Cup!

Howls of laughter erupted as I (pointlessly by this stage) squealed and covered the offending portion of my personage. This incident (now known as Boob Cam) has become something of an office legend; the reverberations of which are still echoing around the hallways (and in my friend’s head, evidently, judging by his quickness to link me to Boobquake).

Well, anyway, I’m sure that, with a little therapy, my Melbourne colleagues will recover from the Boob Cam incident, but I do wonder how the religious cleric is coping after 200,000 women popped open their buttons on Boobquake Day.

Forget earthquakes; the poor chap probably had a heart attack when he saw all that jiggling flesh!

Well, anyway, I hope he’s learned his lesson: never mess with scientific chicks.

They’ll bring you ‘undone’ every time!

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Do the iPod Shuffle

I suspect there’s probably a very good reason why nobody close to me has previously bothered to avail me of an iPod. That reason may be that the fusing of my ears to a musical source that is not being heard by anyone else in the room (train, shop or street) could be fraught with danger and/or embarrassment.

But apparently this factor must have paled into insignificance against the prospect of being able to obtain one of these devices cheaply from Duty Free. Thus, the spouse (disguised as Santa) last Christmas handed over the little blue scrap of metal and plastic. Big mistake!

Now, I am sure this particular drama must regularly play out in homes all across the world. Unsuspecting iPod-givers swiftly begin to rue their purchase as its proud new owner jigs pathetically around the house blurting out misinterpreted lyrics and off-key riffs. So surely I am not the only such song-murderer.

Well anyway, the spouse has been remarkably tolerant. Despite a few withering looks as I rumba, Latino style through the loungeroom while some vintage Santana pumps through my eardrums, he has held his tongue. Presumably this is because he knows that he is to blame. If he wasn’t such a cheapskate, he wouldn’t have dived so quickly on the offer of a cheap iPod.

However, tonight the pain must have been too much. There I was sitting at my computer, iPod Shuffle firmly plugged in ear and secretly marvelling, I must admit, at my fabulous multi-tasking capacity – typing and singing all at once! With the Dixie Chicks’ rendition of “Landslide” playing in my ears, I simultaneously sang (brilliantly of course!) and checked my emails while the spouse watched telly in the adjoining room.

Suddenly, somewhere between seeing “my reflection in the snooow-covered hiiiills” and the landslide “bringing me dooown” I noticed a muffled noise. Assuming it was the dogs on the verandah, I glanced up to see what they were doing. No dogs, so back I went to verbally twanging out a few banjo bars and a little bit of “maaaaaybeeee!” But there it was again; the muffled noise; only louder this time. It quite startled me, in fact (although not enough to entice me to pull out the earplugs). I turned to the spouse to see if he, too, had heard the offending noise. Clearly he had.

“Will you SHUT UP!” he was yelling. At ME. I dragged the earplugs out and looked quizzically at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“You!” he shouted. “I can’t hear the TV with all that racket!”

“Well, you bought it for me!” I huffed, “Did you really think it would be possible for me to not sing along?”

He just rolled his eyes and turned the telly up a bit louder.

Well anyway, sadly I think it must be a dodgy iPod Shuffle, for it’s suddenly stopped allowing me to shuffle at all. Seems my iPod Shuffle has become my “I’ll Podding-well Shuffle If I Feel Like It Shuffle” (much to the relief of the spouse).

“Oh, what a shame,” he says almost genuinely. “Perhaps I’ll buy you another one NEXT Christmas.

Perhaps he’s disappointed that he won’t be hearing my melodious tones anytime soon.

Well, “maaaaaaybeeeeee!”

(Or…um… maybe not).

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A Mooooving Tale

You often hear about strange things that happen to people. Weird and wonderful things. Worrying or frightening things. Funny or sad things.

Usually we just smile (or frown) and think “poor bugger” or something similarly compassionate and heartfelt ….. and then we just forget about it. Other times these stories become like folklore and give the person who endured the happening (or the families and friends thereof) many happy years of entertainment as the story gets retold, rehashed and sometimes even reinvented!

One such folklorish story that (happily!) needs no embellishment is the one about a close relative of mine ….. and a cow…in the middle of the city.

He is an accountant. Very respectable person. Responsible job. Nice office in town. Normally this chap (whom, for the purposes of this story, I shall call Pierre) likes to live a quiet life, mind his own business and not draw unwarranted attention to himself.

And that’s exactly what he was doing one summer’s morning as he drove his car to work; wending his way through congested city traffic; half listening to the ABC news and presumably thinking about calculations and fiscal responsibility, as you do if you are, unlike me, a lover of numbers. (Personally I would rather think about decaying compost than anything remotely numerical. Luckily it’s not up to people like me to keep the world’s economy in order. Phew!).

Anyway, it was a warm morning and Pierre had his car window wound down in order to capture the slight breeze that flitted between the tall city buildings. He was clearly in the ‘zone’ – a zombie-like state reserved for regular commuters to stop them from going insane. Not really thinking about anything in particular (creepy numbers notwithstanding) and certainly not thinking about the possible ramifications of being stuck at the lights with a cattle truck in the next lane. And that was his mistake.

For just as he was about to take off on the green light, something rather unexpected happened. He felt upon his window-side arm a warm, slushy wetness and witnessed in horror a rush of browny-green pooey slime jettisoning down the side of the truck and all over his hitherto dignified, white-shirted personage! Arggh!!

I suspect a few words not befitting a respectable, number-loving citizen may have similarly jettisoned out of poor Pierre’s mouth as he struggled to come to grips with what had just happened. Pooed on? In the middle of the city? By a cow? What the….?

So Pierre did what any good accountant with cow poo all over his body driving in the middle of the city would do. He kept driving to work. Well, I guess it’s true that we often revert to routine in times of stress, so Pierre’s natural instinct was to head for his comfort zone. But how could the office be his comfort zone when he was decorated in smelly cow dung? It’s not like no-one would notice!

Upon arrival he sat in the basement car park to consider his position. Could he risk being late for a very important meeting by going home for a shower and shirt change? Or was his shirt salvageable with a towel-down? Would anyone really care?

He decided to phone his office to explain his predicament. Predictably there were plenty of hearty guffaws coming through the phone as his tale of woe quickly circulated around the office. (And I suspect there were many hysterical retellings in pubs and at workmates’ homes later that day).

Pierre’s boss finally suggested he go home and attend to his ablutions. After all, who would want to do business deals with a human dung beetle?

Well anyway, it all ended well. Pierre got cleaned up. The business deal got closed; and so did Pierre’s driver’s-side window whenever driving alongside trucks in the future.

A very wise move, Pierre. A very wise moooooove, indeed!

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Terror on our streets?

You don’t have to look far to find stories about terrible accidents and things that happen to people as a result of transport.

Buses crashing, trains smashing, cars piling up, motor-bikes going down, pedestrians sent flying. Every day, many poor people come to grief as a result of attempting to get from A to B. Yet every year there seems to be some new, faster, better (and presumably safer) mode of transport hitting our world markets; Very Fast Trains, electric cars, super-jets, Holdens with air-bags all round.

Yes, we are always thinking of new ways to entice people to step outside their front doors, take their lives into someone else’s hands and part with the plastic in their wallets.

But there is another little scourge that has been quietly hitting our highways, byways, laneways and shopping strips in recent years. And it’s perhaps more insidious and dangerous than all of the above.

It’s the “Granny Mobile”. Yes, those cute little golf carts you’ll see zooming along a footpath near you.

Now before you start labeling me as a gerophobic Granny Snubber, let me just say at the outset that I am all for elderly and infirm people having the capacity to get around safely and comfortably. Like the rest of us (and perhaps moreso than some of us) they have earned their right to travel about in whatever mode they so choose. So I am not criticizing older people per se.

They deserve to access all the pleasures of life and I think it’s fabulous that they are able to maintain their independence in such a way. Besides, it won’t be too many years before I am one of their number, so it wouldn’t be very smart of me to incite an uprising of anti-grannyism, would it? (Although, I am presuming that in true Baby Boomer style, our future Granny Mobiles will be equipped with GPS, full surround sound, air-conditioning, Skype and an inbuilt foot massager…and that will be just the base model…..).

No, I am not wishing to cause any trouble, but I would like to comment on the sheer number of Granny Mobiles out there in Pedestrian World, the frightening speed at which some of them travel and the capacity for terror in our streets when more than one of them get together.

Take last week, for example. There I was, walking down the main street minding my own business when in the distance I saw not one, but two GMs heading my way — side by side — along the footpath.

“How nice,” I thought. “Two elderly folk out for a ‘walk’ together”.

But my charitable thoughts were challenged when I realized these two Octogenarian Fangio’s had absolutely no intention of going ‘single file’ to allow for us pedestrians!

“It’s okay,” I thought, chastising myself for being so churlish about a couple of old people chugging along the street together, “I will just move to the side and let them past.”

And that’s when it happened. Behind me came the sudden whir and rumble of yet ANOTHER granny-mobile heading in the opposite direction. Yikes! A ‘head on’ was imminent and, not only that, but I was about to become the salami in a golf buggy sandwich!

Fortunately for me, the situation was averted when one of the Grannies swerved abruptly into ‘parking’ position, leapt spritely out of her buggy (like an Olympic pole-vaulter on caffeine) and sprinted lithely into the newsagent to get the last available copy of the Marathon Runners Weekly.

Cowering fearfully against a parking meter with a few other pedestrians who had also dived for cover, I had a sudden realization.

You don’t mess with old people; especially ones with wheels. They have the power, and they know how to use it.

Beep! Beep!

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Absolutely Fabulous?

Remember the old philosophical question that goes (roughly) like this: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?” Or maybe you are more familiar with a recent, cheeky version, which goes: ”If a man says something and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?”

Well, I have been postulating about a little query of my own.

If you do something fabulous and no one is there to admire it, is it still fabulous?

This leads me to today’s discussion. I have been thinking a lot about the social nature of humankind. Yes, I know that’s pretty deep coming from someone who generally prefers to explore the social nature of drinks on the verandah, but I thought I would give it a whirl.

You see, I have been reading an interesting book which discusses the human propensity for identifying with our egos as opposed to identifying with our essential selves. It claims that it is our ego which encourages us to compete, make war, revere money, achieve success and avoid fattening desserts and that this is ….well, basically ….. what is wrong with us as a species. Instead of honouring our true spirits we are too busy honouring our egotistical notions and wrecking the world with selfishness and greed in the process.

Hmmm. Sounds bad. And complex isn’t it? I do apologise if you are reading this over brekky. Philosophical discussions of this kind should be reserved for later in the day when one has a nice glass of red and a fellow philosopher on hand to chew the fat with. Which leads me (rather nicely - if my ego does say, itself!) back to where I was heading with this piece in the first place; the social nature of humankind.

I have always presumed (in, admittedly, an ill-thought-through kind of way) that people who are ‘social’ are also naturally helpful, giving and benevolent. Well, it seems like a sensible enough assumption, doesn’t it? People who are people-people do tend to get along with and do good things for other people. Therefore, what’s so wrong with that thinking?

On the face of it, it does seem fair enough. But at a deeper level, it leads one to speculate if ‘social people’ merely gravitate to others as a means of boosting their own egos. Do they choose their friends according to the likelihood of the friends nurturing their own egos with compliments and admiration? I suspect there may be some truth in that.

After all, I’m sure most of us don’t hunt around for a friend that will drain our emotional and financial resources and constantly find new and innovative ways to treat us badly. No. Besides the fact that many of us gave birth to people who will do that for free, we do tend to align ourselves with people who treat us with love, humour and compassion.

But do we also tend to find friends that highlight our ‘good points’? Do we subconsciously look for people who are dumber, fatter, broker, blotchier, wrinklier, worse at maths or grumpier than us just so we can compare ourselves -- favourably of course -- against these Human Benchmarks? Are our ‘good deeds’ really for the benefit of others, or is there an element of ‘this makes me look/feel good’? Would there be any point in being nice or achieving fabulous things if nobody actually noticed?

Well, like any typical wishy-washy philosopher, I have no definitive answer. That’s not my job remember! Philosophers just ask the questions then walk away, casually twirling their rope belts, while you anguish over their postulations for many years to come. That’s what we do!

So, like my philosophical forebears, I will leave you to think about this one.
And I do hope you think this has been a fabulously interesting article and that you are sitting there admiring my wit and insights. Not that my essential self really cares, of course.

……Much!

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The Accidental Streaker

True story. An acquaintance (whom I shall call X) was staying for a few days at a rather flash hotel in the city.

On the second day after his arrival he was apologetically asked by the hotel management if he would mind moving to another room due to some problem with a booking.

Being a helpful kind of chap, X happily agreed and, to his satisfaction, found that the new room was almost identical to the other room, apart from the fact that the layout was completely reversed. But this minor inconvenience certainly posed no problem to X who went about his day unperturbed and finished the evening with a drink or nineteen in the bar with his colleagues.

After the twenty-somethingth ale, X was feeling decidedly sleepy and wobbled his way back to his room. He donned his ‘night shirt’ (forgetting to add any ‘night pants’) and climbed into bed to catch some ZZZs.

Sometime in the night, however, he felt the urge of nature and fumbled his way in the dark across the room to the bathroom. As he entered the room, he noted (in a foggily surprised kind of way) that the bathroom was extremely well lit.

“Hmmph!” he thought. “They must have a very large electricity bill!” And that’s when he realised that he was not in the bathroom at all. Being momentarily confused by the reverse layout of the room, the poor chap had wandered half naked into the hotel hallway!

Just as this realisation was making its way into his still slightly befuddled brain, X heard something that no man devoid of underpants and standing in a brilliantly lit hallway in the middle of a swanky hotel wants to hear.

Click! The sound of his bedroom door snapping locked behind him!

You can imagine the poor man, trying to get his muddled neurones to come up with a feasible plan for getting out of this sticky situation with his reputation in tact (and his private bits kept…well…private). But the neurones were evidently in no state to be much help. They didn’t even suggest that X take off his T Shirt and use it as a loin cloth in order to maintain some modesty! Let alone provide him with some logical advice about getting someone else to phone Reception for him.

No. Instead they suggested he sneak down to Reception and get someone to give him another key to his room. They didn’t contemplate that, when the lift arrived, it would be jam-packed with shocked onlookers who were on their way down to dinner (apparently it turned out to be not the middle of the night at all – but rather only about 8.00 pm).

But anyway, eventually our poor hapless hero did indeed waddle embarrassedly into Reception with his T Shirt dragged down at the front (but unfortunately leaving his bare bottom exposed at the back) and was thankfully (and expediently, I’m sure) returned safe and sound to the privacy of his own room.

No doubt the other hotel patrons heaved a sigh of relief as the semi-naked man was quickly spirited away, but I’ll bet the security guys checking the CCT had a great laugh at the evening’s footage!

Moral of the story? Never place your trust in a bunch of paralytic neurones.

But perhaps more importantly, never forget your undies in public!

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