Jargon

One of the funniest things about working in the play industry is the terminology. In fact, you often overhear parts of conversation that could easily be mis-understood should your mind be dirty enough to make the connection (and alas, mine is).

Just this morning I overheard this little snippet of conversation between one of our sales guys and a customer:

Sales Guy: Did you check out David’s balls while you were down there?

Customer: Yeah, I had a feel of them, and they’re quite different to mine.

Sales Guy: Oh really?

Customer: Yeah, they were a lot firmer. I would prefer if mine were like that too.

The knowledge that you have to keep a straight face during a conversation like this somehow makes things like toilet humour so much more hilarious than they would otherwise be. And things seem to have a dirtier undertone to them once it becomes inappropriate to laugh. For example, it’s not appropriate to laugh at ball jokes while talking about kids’ playgrounds, yet somehow that only serves to make it funnier.

For the record, it was actually a conversation about a playground ball pit.

The Bottom Job

I was watching a movie the other day, and in one scene a man bragged that his new girlfriend had just been promoted to Assistant Head of Paediatrics.

Immediately and without missing a beat, KJ said "Does that mean that her business card says 'Ass Head of Paediatrics'?"


Now I'm determined to find an assistant head of department so that I can check their business card to see if he's right.

Kookaburras at Work

I think it’s kind of funny that it took a court case to decide if Men at Work’s song ‘Down under’ ripped of the kids folk tune ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree’. It’s pretty damn similar. And considering that the video clip for the song features a guy sitting in a gum tree playing the riff on a flute (check it out on the video, about 55 seconds in), I can’t imagine it took the judge long to find them guilty of copyright infringement.

It’s also odd that it took them 29 years to realise the song had been ripped off – especially since ‘Down under’ was such a massive number one hit, and not just in Australia. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Aussies are essentially super lazy, and so I’m guessing they probably just couldn’t be bothered until now.

I say they did us all a favour by turning an irritating song that we were forced to sing over and over in primary school into something that we can all enjoy listening to again. Thanks Men at Work!

The Un-Funny Bone

I’ve decided to campaign to have the humerus bone renamed the un-humerus. I don’t think there’s anything funny about hitting your elbow – it hurts like hell and the fact that some smart arse named it the funny bone just makes it all the more annoying.

This way, if it’s called the un-humerus, when people hit their elbows they won’t say things like “funny my arse, stupid bloody name.”
Instead they’ll feel a sense of satisfaction because they whacked their un-funny bone and it really genuinely was un-funny.

Random Facts as Promised

Yesterday I said that I would share something random about myself that most people wouldn’t know. At the time, I hadn’t really thought of anything, but thought to myself - really, how hard can it be to admit that I’m a weirdo? Apparently not that hard at all, because it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the random things about myself that other people might find odd, such as:

• My freakish and totally inexplicable love of Eurovision
• My embarrassing inability to wink
• My extreme dislike of exercise (yes, apparently that makes me weird, although I’m still not sure why)
• The fact that I might possibly be the only person ever to admit that they enjoy painting their house
• My high level of social retardation and the fact that I’m incapable of making small talk

But I did manage to think up another couple of things that I’m willing to confess to that might make you laugh (at me, of course – not with me). I can’t, however, make any guarantees that they’ll be any more interesting than my previously confessed random facts. But then again, I never promised anything interesting, only truthful, so here we go.

Random Fact #1
I don’t wear socks. Ever. In fact, I rarely ever even wear shoes that require socks – if you don’t do any exercise you never need to wear runners, so it’s not really an issue. I’m not even sure if I own a pair of socks at all.

Random Fact #2
I am hopeless at learning song lyrics. For a period of about three years I sang loudly along to ‘April Sun in Cuba’ with absolutely no idea what the words or the title of the song were. Since ‘April Sun in Cuba’ doesn’t actually sound like any other sentence, I just sang nonsense words. I was actually a little disappointed to find out what the lyrics were in the end.

Random Fact #3
I can fold an origami paper crane without any instructions. Also an origami hat, but that’s not quite as impressive. It’s as a result of reading ‘Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes’ when I was about 7 years old. I remember that reading the book made me immensely sad in a very un-7-year-old kind of way, and to this day whenever I fold one I still get a little teary.


There, now don’t you feel like you know me a little better and like you might want to confess to a few random facts of your own?

Premature Congratulations

Someone from an opposition company just rang up to congratulate me because he heard 'on the grapevine' that I'm pregnant and about to give birth!!!! What the...?! This is news to me since I'm not pregnant and as such NOT ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH!

I didn't speak to him directly, so I'm not sure what kind of messed up grapevine he got this info from, but I'm very tempted to call him back and yell down the phone 'Are you calling me fat?!!!' Just to see what reaction I get. I think he would be so horrified that he would forget that we've never actually met in person so there's no way he could possibly have anything to say about how I look.