Ok,
So everybody needs to work.
Work is what puts food in our mouths and roofs over our heads, and Chinese-made clothes on our bodies.

Working in a call centre is one job that you can have.

I have encountered call centre workers who go above and beyond the call of duty, call centre workers who make my day, take their time explaining things my simple brain can’t comprehend, and generally have a great sense of communication and sense of customer need.

These experiences far outweigh my bad experiences, until lately.

It seems that HR at “call centre jobs R us” have lowered their standards of employment.
It seems that they’ll hire anyone who can use a telephone and read a script on a cubical wall.

I don’t recommend this job to anyone who is:
a) A fuckwit
b) unhelpful
c) arrogant
d) dismissive
e) assuming
f) brain-dead.

Is making every aspect of call centre communication (the waiting, the transferring, the endless rote reading from the script in front of them to answer questions, the horrid on hold music) all just a way to force me into internet communication with my telco/bank/warranty provider?

I don’t know.

All I ask is that whomever is there, sitting in their little gerbil booth with a Madonna mic and a laminated script in front of them waiting to help me out, use some of their own initiative when answering questions.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you when that will happen, that’s another department’s duty, if you like you can call back between 10:00 and 10:05 every second Thursday to ask them when it will happen” isn’t the kind of answer that I want to my question.

Thanks go to the last guy I just spoke to then, who used his own brain, even used the phrase “yes, I know it’s a hassle, though as soon as we send it out to you, which won’t take that long, you’ll be up and running, thanks for your patience” made it all better.

A whiny “sorry that’s all I can do for you, there’s no other way around it, there’s no other options” in my general direction only infuritates a customer more.

A tiny bit of compassionate talk, however fake, goes a long way to making the person who’s sitting there on hold feel a lot better about not getting whatever they called up to get.
I know it’s not real, you know it’s not real, but it does make me feel better about sitting on hold for twenty minutes listening to your corporate jingle replayed over and over with some Peter Sculthorpe type remix every now and then…

xx aa

Ok, hands down.
Stan Lee’s “Search for a Superhero” is simply the most genius reality TV show ever created.
It’s so brilliant I can barely speak.
Normal, every day folk who believe they’re super heroes, competing in tasks to win a comic book penned in their honour.
GOsh it is fantastic.
Sci-Fi Channel.
Watch and rejoice.
xx aa

Last night I was very gratefully invited to an 18th birthday.
It was the birthday of the sister of some mates of mine, and I’ve come to know her folks too.
So I went along to the first 18th I’ve been to since 1992 when all my mates had their parties.

The theme was ‘dress like a movie character’.
I’ve been on tour and away for ages, and I accepted the invite on the way home from the airport, so I didn’t have time to get a costume.
I have a black suit, white shirt and black tie handy, so I thought – Bingo.
I’ll go as one of my favourite movie heroes, Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs.
Tim Roth’s genius performance in that movie inspired me to no end, and in fact I’ve taken to wearing that suit out a bit lately as I feel all ‘Vincent Vega’ in it too.

So I rock in to the party, and it’s full on.
Everyone is really, really young. Really.
Everyone is fully dressed up, too.
There’s Fred Flinstone, Rocky Balboa, Rick James, Foxy Cleopatra and a whole bunch more.
The birthday girl looked beautiful and her brother looked like a very convincing Rambo.

A few of birthday girl’s mates came over to say hello, and said,
“Hey, great Men in Black suit.”
I protested,
“But I’m Mr. Orange, the bad-ass undercover cop from Reservoir Dogs”.
They giggled and said “Who?”

Allow me to point out that at no stage of the night did I once get jiggy with it, either.

I felt very, very old.

The fact of the matter is that I’m thirty-three years old, have a mortgage, a fianceé and pay my taxes.
By all accounts, I should be grown up.
Then why do I check myspace twice a day, obsess over sneakers and South Park, text like a demon, and still get pimples?

xx aa

With apologies to Kat.
Here’s some super-rad youtube.
Photos of awesome NIN gig to come..
xx aa

What is it with Junkies in Melbourne?
Twice in two days, Jim and I have been approached by late-teens early-twenties, not unpretty girls in expensive shoes, fashionable clothes, ponytails, 3/4 jumpers and jeans.
They all start the story the same..
“Oi?” (pronounced with three syllables, so it’s O-i-i)
“I’ve come down from Bendigo/Ballarat/Shepparton to visit my Gran/Sister/Dad and they won’t let me stay with them, I was with some mates last night and I’m trying to get $16/$60 for backpackers/train ticket so I can get home/shelter.
I don’t have a job and my brother/six year old is hungry and I’ve got to get some food into me/them.
Can you lend (obviously unaware of the true meaning of the word as I doubt I’d ever get it back) me some cash?”

How can two separate girls, who look similarly well-to-do, be complaining of being homeless/stuck in Melbourne with THE EXACT SAME FUCKIN’ STORY?
Do they write in in Smacky News of the week?
I was astonished.
So much so, that Jim and I, when approached by the second girl today, pretty much told the story to her before she could get it out herself.
Best part of Smacky II was that she “was given $6.50″ by her mates that she stayed with and has since “got about $9 all up”.
So she’s begged two dollars fifty from passers by.
And she’d been at it all day.

Now,
I have never been homeless, or desparate, or in such a situation (thank all the universe and all history).
However, if I was begging, I wouldn’t do it in a $200 pair of nikes, and a beautiful woven jumper from sportsgirl.

On another hand, I ended up forking over some dough to both of these ladies, and certainly hope that their story was fabricated and that everything is, in fact, ok in their world.

All I’d suggest is to perhaps change the story..

xx aa

So in the cab, the morning after the Logies on Monday in Melbourne, on my way to the radio station, I get a cab driver, who is obviously and devoutly of Islamic faith. Mohammed was his name, he had the hat and even the great music.
Lovely man.
I asked who’d won the French election and he replied “the right wing man”.
I responded that “that’s going to cause a fuss now, isn’t it?”.

He replied with not a talk-radio style tirade, but with Frank Zappa lyrics.
Yes, Zappa.
He used the following lyric,

“I am gross and perverted, I’m obsessed and deranged,
I have existed for years, but very little has changed.
I’m the tool of the government and industry too,
For I am destined to rule and regulate you.
I may be vile and pernicious, but you can’t look away,
I make you think I’m delicious with the stuff that I say.
I’m the best you can get.
Have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozing out from your TV set.”,

to argue his point that mass media in France demonizes Islam and that it was all a bunch of bollocks..

Whatever I thought about it didn’t matter.
I just thought that this late-50′s guy used Zappa lyrics to argue a topical political point was interesting.

He then got a little odd, saying everyone had to accept Islam into their lives if the world was to be at peace.
I asked “what about the buddhists? Them too?”
He said that they were O.K. Because some big time Islamic cleric embraced Buddhism too.
Phew!

xx aa

One of the best animations I’ve ever seen.
A music lover’s must!!

xx aa

At seven years of age, I’d barely progressed past trying not to pick my nose and eat it in public.
Come to think of it, I’ve only developed more stealthy ways of doing it.
Anyway,
Trip is 7 and he has a fuckin’ unreal band.
Check it.