A hunger for knowledge

Every day on my way to work I walk past the local public school. I can't hold it in any longer! I want the world to know that their school logo really disturbs me.



It consists of three baby birds sitting in a nest, their beaks turned skyward. Presumably they are waiting for the mother bird to swoop overhead and regurgitate the contents of her stomach into their hungry, waiting mouths.

Is this supposed to be a bizarre metaphor for the transfer of knowledge? Ewww.

Feral Geral(d), part deux

Oh my God, you guys. How the plot with Gerald has thickened.

One of the higher-ups at work has finally cottoned on that Gerald has way too much time on his hands, and is essentially being paid quite well to perv on his female colleagues. The result is that Gerald has been made redundant (i.e. there is no demand for lecherous old guys - the market is saturated.)

He's going to be kept on for a few more weeks, but from October 10 I'm going to be free!

Gerald came down to my desk to break the news to me, and was lamenting how technology had made his clerking services nearly obsolete. In the course of my phony commiseration, I made some offhand comment about the business my parents once owned, foolishly mentioning it by name. Well, I could have slapped myself as soon as Gerald's beady little eyes lit up. It turns out that I'm a second-generation Gerald victim; he knew my parents through their company and evidently hassled my mum over the course of the 20+ years while she and my dad were in business together. I'm surprised it took him this long to make the connection.

The redundancy was quickly forgotten and Gerald was positively giddy as he made multiple trips to my desk, each time saying "It's a small world!" (and me mentally replying: "Evidently not small enough! (Good one, me. High five.)").

Then he wondered aloud, "What happened to the business? Did Mary and Steve split up?"
"Yeah, they divorced," I replied
Then, in the most obnoxious, infuriating move EVER, he cocked his head to the side and said doubtfully, "Did they?"
YES, THEY DID. DAMN IT, GERALD. They're my parents, I think I'd know. But thank you for invalidating my painful childhood memories!

I scampered home to tell my mum, and we sat around swapping Gerald stories. Here are some of my favorite anecdotes from her collection:

• Gerald used to live with his mother, whom he referred to in conversation as "Mother". Yeah, that's right. "Mother" as in, "Mother isn't feeling well today".
  
  Say no more.
  
  
• Gerald committed to memory the first and middle names of my siblings and I, and used to ask my mum about us every time he ran into her, in this format:
  G: "How is David Bryan?"
  Mum: "Fine."
  G: "And how is Jennifer Maree?"
  ... and so on.
  
  I'll just mention that this is the exact same conversational angle that was once used by a violent felon who was trying to scare the bejeesus out of my mum back when she practiced criminal law. The same one who had the tires on our family car slashed.
  
  Of course, intimidation was not Gerald's intent, but I'm not sure why he went to the trouble of memorizing all our names. I'm one of four kids, all of us dull and unremarkable children. Certainly not worth inquiring about collectively (let alone individually) several times a week.
  
  
• Gerald obtained our home telephone number from the phone book and would occasionally call in the wee hours of the AM with a flimsy excuse to chitchat with my mum. This continued for some time until my dad told him to get stuffed.
  

Evidently he was very sweet on my mother, probably because she is incapable of acting with overt impatience or unkindness towards lonely old geezers.

And so we have come full circle.

They had it coming

I went to high school with a girl (let's call her 'Jane') whose mother was a very prominent politician. Jane and I both played basketball, though on different teams. One Wednesday night after my game had finished, I was bullied into refereeing Jane's game. I'd never refereed before and I tried desperately to beg off, because although I had been playing for four seasons, I didn't exactly understand the rules of basketball. Also, I'm afraid of whistles.

My pleas were ignored and I was practically shoved onto the court. It was a disaster from start to finish, and my bumbling and total incompetence as a referee wasn't helped by the abuse being hurled at me from the sidelines by the coaches and players' parents, with Jane's mother being the ringleader.

By the time second quarter rolled around, someone had located a more capable ref and I was thankfully demoted to scoreboard operator. Unfortunately, the verbal abuse didn't abate there and shrill Mrs Jane continued to repeatedly heckle and berate me at volume for not getting the scores up on the board quickly enough.

I spent the remainder of my high school career loathing the vile woman for her role in my public humiliation. It was something I expressed in my own passive aggressive way -- I would often scowl enthusiastically at her portrait which hung amongst pictures of other notable alumni in the school hallway. And that seemed satisfying enough, because I had no idea that something else was out there exacting my revenge for me.

About a year after I graduated high school, I was in my car listening to the radio when I heard on the news that Mrs Jane had been very abruptly ousted from her political position in an embarrassing landslide defeat.
I'm not proud of it now, but I may have yelled, "Yes! In your face!" at the radio. I also may have clasped my hands together and pumped them above my head in a primal display of victory. Justice truly had been served.

In the (admittedly small) portion of my brain that is rational, I knew that my short lived stint as a referee and her political downfall were two completely separate, unrelated events. In the larger, more fanciful portion of my brain, the latter was a direct result of the former and I for one was delighted that the universe had my back and karma was out there kicking ass for me.

Although my sense of justice is definitely disproportionate, I'm not a complete asshole. My schadenfreude for Mrs Jane fizzled out during her messy public divorce some years later. When I recently read in the newspaper that she had lost a bit of money in something resembling a Nigerian scam, I just felt pity. But how do you tell karma, "It's cool, I'm not mad anymore, find someone else to pick on,"?

* * *

This morning, I was walking to work on a narrow footpath. I sped up and drifted to the right to overtake the person walking in front of me, when a jogger came up behind me and barked "MOVE!" before elbowing me out of the way.

He's going down.

"I bumped my lip on a biscuit. It's not a cold sore!"

On Friday night I was dismayed to find that one of my many* gentleman callers has left his calling card in the form of a disfiguring cold sore on my bottom lip.

I'm not the type of person to let a ragin' case of the herpes ruin my weekend, so I decided to go online to seek advice from the internet doctor.

The first site I stumbled upon was this one, a collection of user-submitted home remedies for cold sores. You guys, there is a reason why laypeople are not allowed to dispense medical advice and this site is it.

Among the various cold sore cures that this site suggests, the one that comes up time and time again is ear wax. Ear wax! So I suppose one should just swivel their pinky around in there for a while and smear the results on their lips? Eww! How am I supposed to kiss my (*)husband with those nasty wax encrusted lips? That's gross.

Another contributor to the site offered a ten-step plan to getting rid of a cold sore overnight. I have to admit that I skimmed most of it, until step 7 which gave instructions for applying nail polish remover to the cold sore as follows:

"Imagine that you are an archeologist and you are using some acid to clear some stubborn fossilised mud off a priceless gold medallion."

WHAT? Why?

"This makes the process quite fun."

But it stings!

"I don't care if it stings, just think about how much money you'll make once you sell that medallion to the museum of natural history!"

I think it's fair to say that this is the point that I left that website.

Spent the entire weekend indoors as a social pariah so I could ride out the cold sore. Woke up for work today and it still hasn't diminished. On the plus side, it gave Gerald something new to stare at at work this morning (as he stared, I could practically hear him thinking that I must be one of those Bad Women With Loose Morals, the type that his mother warned him about).

So I just wrote an entire entry about a cold sore. Sorry, you guys. I'm at rock bottom for material. Maybe that ear wax isn't such a bad idea...



*nonexistent

The luck of the Lola

Let me start this entry by explaining that I have no fashion sense whatsoever. Part of the problem is that I wore a school uniform for 13 years and got used to not having to think about what to wear on a day to day basis.

As a result, I dislike fashion and clothing. You know how some girls have certain fashion aspirations - for example, to own a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes? My single fashion-related wish is for a Great Depression style economic meltdown so that it might again become socially acceptable for one to kick around town wearing a hessian sack. Those really were the good old days.

When I started my new job, I needed to buy some new clothes. For me, clothes shopping involves going to the nearest department store, spending 15 minutes picking out the most unadventurous and inoffensive clothing that I can find, and paying for it without trying it on. Afterwards, I reward myself for having to endure the whole boring experience by buying myself a donut (or 3).

I wore one of my newer shirts to work today. Sometime around midday I was chatting with one of the paralegals when he snickered and said:

"What’s that on your shirt?"

I looked down, thinking I had spilled food without realizing it. And then… I saw it.

You guys, look at what some sick freak at the sweatshop put on my shirt. I guess the design is so small that I never noticed it when buying the stupid thing.



A friggin' shamrock? The hell? WHY?

So word got around about my Shamrock Shirt and for the rest of the day, I had to endure "Top o' the morning!", "Where's me lucky charm - ooh, 'tis on your shirt", etc from my comedian co-workers. Hilarious!

You can bet that tonight I’m going to riverdance myself on down to the store that sold the offending article to ask for a refund. And from now on I'm going to scrutinize all future shirt purchases for renegade shamrocks. To be sure, to be sure.

Epiphany

Spent this weekend looking through some family photo albums and had a bit of a breakthrough.

I'm pretty sure that my various character flaws and general failure at adult life can be attributed to the fact that my mother used to dress me up like Prince.



Twenty years later and I still can't listen to Purple Rain without screaming and clawing at the invisible lace cravat around my neck.

Any psychologists care to weigh in?

Going for gold

My little sister is applying to work as a summer camp counselor after she finishes high school. I've been helping her fill out a ton of forms and organise her references, which got me to thinking about some of the babysitters I had growing up.

Both of our parents worked full time, so my brother, sisters and I have had our fair share of babysitters. During the school holidays, we were usually left with Enza, our next door neighbour. Enza was dull and responsible -- the type of person who made us wash our hands before eating lunch. One summer, Enza got accepted into the police academy and could no longer look after us, so mum decided to hire Katie, the teenager who lived across the road.

Katie was a student at a prestigious performing arts high school, into which she had been accepted on the basis of her acting and singing talents. Katie's brother, Peter, was a musician and had just recorded his first album: "Premature Ejaculation".

Katie's first idea for a summer project was to teach my sister and I the lyrics to all the songs of "Premature Ejaculation". If we learned all the words, Katie said, we might even be hired as backup singers if Peter ever went on tour. Feverish with the possibilities of stardom, my sister and I dutifully wrote the lyrics down in a notebook and religiously practiced singing them every night before bed. I guess my mum overheard us, or found the notebook, or one of us asked 'whats a premature ejaculation' at the dinner table, because one day Katie said we weren't allowed to rehearse Peter's music anymore.

She never had a shortage of fun ideas, though. One morning, Katie told us that we were going for a walk. On the way, she told us that an idea for performance art had appeared in her dreams and she wanted to try it out in public.

We wound up in the food court at Chatswood Chase, the local upscale shopping mall.


It was the school holidays and close to lunch, so the place was pretty crowded. Katie took her bag off and handed it to my sister to hold. Then, she got down on her knees and eased herself flat on the floor so that she lay face down, her nose touching the tiles. A few people stopped and stared, perhaps wondering if the girl was having some kind of seizure.

She lay very still for a few moments, and then, without warning, she launched into what can be best described as a stationary breaststroke. She worked her arms and legs simultaneously in careful coordinated movements, propelling herself through the imaginary water. She ducked her head up and down, as if coming up for air before submerging again.

As more people began to gather around and watch (and laugh), Katie moved through all the strokes. She did freestyle and butterfly and even doggy paddle before rolling over for a few laps of backstroke. She seemed oblivious to the reactions of the crowd, but remained focused on reaching some imaginary finish line.

My brother slunk away, hiding behind his comic book, but I made sure to stand close to Katie. I was nearly hit by her flailing limbs a couple of times, but I wanted to make sure that all bystanders knew that I was associated with this person. The attention was invigorating - not as intense as one might experience as a backup singer on the Premature Ejaculation tour, but intoxicating nonetheless.

Security came and told Katie to 'get out of the pool'. She obediently picked herself up off the food court floor, dusted herself off and my sister handed her back her bag.

Then we went home.

Feral Geral(d)

In the short time I've been at my new job, I seem to have attracted the attention of the office's resident creepy old man.

His name is Gerald, and although the company directory lists his position as a Clerk, his daily activities would lead one to believe that his sole purpose in the firm is to skeeve out the ladies (presumably to keep us from climbing too far up the corporate ladder, or something).

The fun starts when I get to my desk at 8am each morning. Within five minutes of me sitting down, G will approach my cubicle (may I just add that he emerges out of nowhere, he's rather stealthy for an octogenarian), drape an arm oh-so casually over the top my cubicle wall and ask me if I am 'firing on all pistons today'. This is his one and only conversation starter, and I'm pretty sure that he's been using that very line to court the dames since World War II.

While I'm thinking of a response - the default is a fake chuckle followed by "Yes, thanks", but sometimes I like to mix it up - G will take the opportunity to have a nice lingering perv at my boobs, which is where his gaze will remain for the rest of the conversation. He'll ramble on about nothing for a couple more minutes before slinking away to harrass his next victim.

Over the course of the day, Gerald will visit my desk at least three more times, always for superfluous reasons (to tell me the names of everyone who is absent from work, to check that I am still firing on all pistons, etc). This always gets me annoyed, because he'll interrupt whatever I'm doing so that I can be an audience for his rambling monologues. Take today, for instance. He was prattling on about something or other, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to get back to the document I was in the middle of typing (said document was a graphically detailed account concerning some unfortunate woman's vaginal tearing, ENOUGH SAID).

You might be thinking that I am being unfairly impatient with an old man, right? Allow me to help you defect to Team Lola: I work for a group of self-important, ridiculously demanding sharks lawyers who like to drown me in work while telling me that they want it on their desks an hour ago. "Sorry boss, but I didn't get your typing done on time because I was letting Gerald ogle my boobies" won't cut it (or will it? I have never actually tried peddling this excuse...).

Lately Gerald has been giving me a daily reminder about his upcoming holiday. He'll be going away for the entire month of July on a sweaty sex romp in Thailand's red light district leisurely jaunt to merry old England. He's been telling me that I'll need to email him my exam results when I get them on July 16. I brush him off by saying "OK, I'll do that" while my inner voice says, "Chh, yeah right"

Today Gerald brought up the topic of emailing again, and decided that he'd give me his personal email address ("because there's no way in hell you're getting mine" I thought). I tore off a scrap of paper for him, on which he very studiously wrote:

Gerald_LastName

Oh, Gerald.

It reminded me of when one of my high school friends was trying to get her mother an email address. As Hotmail's front page loaded up, the mother protested, "But I don't want hotmail, I want email"

LOL, old people find email confusing.

A picture is worth 1,000 LOLs

Is anyone else obsessed with hilarious album art? I'd like to share three favourites from my personal music collection.

I like album art where the artist makes a risky or adventurous fashion choice. Behold "Find Your Way" by Gabrielle:

Ahhh, 1993. The year of the fashion eyepatch.

Here's the album cover of David Lee Murphy’s debut, “Out with a Bang”, which never fails to send me into fits of giggles:

It should have been titled, “Out with those Bangs”. Love the album, hate the hair.

I was really reluctant to include this last one, because it would mean admitting to my enjoyment of the musical stylings of Toby Keith. For the uninitiated, Toby Keith is a country singer with a loudmouth redneck image, who churns out patriotic, borderline sexist and racist tunes for the beer-swilling, Confederate-flag-waving, Rush-Limbaugh-listening demographic. Needless to say, I gobble his music up like a hungry pigeon eats breadcrumbs. His albums and songs often have hokey, LOL-inducing titles (my personal favourites include "Honkytonk University" and "You Ain't Much Fun (Since I Quit Drinking)")

Last year, Tobes released a Christmas album. Imagine my glee as I rushed to download it and was met with this hilarious album cover:

It's got all the essential elements:

Cheesy grin? Check.

Awkward ‘sleaning’ (sitting/leaning) pose with glamour shot-esque hand on cheek? Check. He looks kinda uncomfortable. And where is his right arm?

Santa hat worn over cowboy hat? Check. (As a side note, I’m thrilled to see that the hat-on-hat look is still making the rounds. When I was at school, it was the vogue to wear a baseball cap under one’s bicycle helmet, a style that I rocked frequently.)

I’m struggling to decide if he’s intending to portray a Naughty Santa look or not. I mean, that cheeky expression on his face tells me that at the end of the night, Toby’s still going to be wearing that Santa hat… except not on his head. Or maybe the album cover is completely innocent and my mind is just in the gutter.

OH, TOBY. SO MULTI-LAYERED. SO COMPLEX.

FIRE!

We had a fire drill at work today. This was without a doubt the worst group of staff I have ever ‘drilled with, and that includes the moronic pimply teens I once worked with at Hoyts. It took over fifteen minutes for everyone on our floor to peel themselves away from their desks and congregate in the foyer near the elevators. It took another twenty minutes for everyone to walk the nineteen flights of stairs down the dingy fire escape (with some wanker behind me making “whooo” ghost noises the. entire. time.). The prospect of being engulfed in flames was almost preferable.

The entire affair was underwhelming, because what’s a fire drill without action, suspense and excitement? I have only ever known two people who have treated the almighty fire drill with the appropriate reverence and haste. The first is Arnold Schwarzenegger in his role as Det. John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop (“Eet’s a fire, yooo eediot!”).

The second is Mrs Flynn, my year eight science teacher. Momentary derail: I have many fond memories of sitting in the back row of her class with my friend Crystal, and busily covering the lab bench with graffiti. We did this mainly to curry favour with Mrs Flynn with our M.O. being as follows: At the end of the lesson we would point out our newly laid graffiti to Mrs Flynn and exclaim disapprovingly, “Look what someone did to the bench!”

She would always study the graffiti and sigh and say, “Thank you for telling me, girls.” She would then fetch the Ajax from under her desk and Crystal and I would offer to scrub the graffiti off for her. When we were done, Mrs Flynn always praised us for being such considerate girls and fumed about the inky handed culprit remaining at large.

It seems mean now, but at the time I felt totally justified in my actions (the hag had given me an undeserved 0.5 out of 10 on a science project at the beginning of the year, and revenge is a dish best served daily with a permanent marker). Besides, as a woman of science don’t you agree that she should have been able to make some basic inferences about what was going on here? Granted, this is a woman who was both delighted and baffled by Tamagotchis (they were the rage at the time), but… yeesh.

Anyway, so one afternoon Crystal and I are chilling in the back, scribbling away, and the fire alarm sounds. Everyone scrapes their chairs back and makes for the door as per the established fire drill guidelines, but Mrs Flynn has her own protocol. “HIT THE FLOOR!!!” she wails.
Everyone just stops and stands completely still, gaping at her. After a second, a couple of students slowly start to kneel down on the cold linoleum, looking around with uncertainty, waiting for others to follow. Realising what she’s said, Mrs Flynn looks momentarily flustered and a little bit puzzled, but makes an epic recovery. “NO!” she barks, “CLOSE THE WINDOWS!”

It was the best fire drill ever.

Jesus emails

I think a couple of entries ago I wrote about the commuter bus I took to work. If not, here's a short summary: I used to catch the world's friendliest bus between Hendersonville and Nashville. The same group of people caught the bus everyday and everyone knew eachother by name. I hate public transport, but I loved getting that bus.

When I left Hendersonville, I exchanged email addresses with a number of my bus friends. I've been keeping in contact with most of them. One woman, however...

She was absolutely lovely on the bus and we got on famously, but no matter how many personalised emails I shoot her way, eager to know about the latest developments in her life, all she sends me back are JESUS EMAILS

Today I opened my inbox only to be greeted with the subject line, "God wants me to tell you something!!!"

This was certainly a surprise because even though we've had a rocky relationship over the years, the Lord knows that if he wants to talk my door's always open. Naturally I wondered what God needed to tell me so badly but was too shy to say directly. Based on my past experiences with proxy communications, I thought it'd be one of two possible messages:

• Do you want to go to the dance with me? Yes/no (tick one)
  
• You have a piece of spinach or something in your teeth
  

Natch it was nothing quite as interesting. Just a bunch of Jesusy quotes and this baffling image. Who uses a rose as a bookmark? Why is everything lit up like a Vegas strip joint? I am so confused



Now I've seen Joan of Arcadia and Bruce Almighty enough times to know that when God does manifest himself to humans, he takes the form of (a)a cute teenage guy or (b)Morgan Freeman. He doesn't go around telling middle aged women to spam their friend's inboxes with sickly sweet prose and epilepsy inducing animated GIFs in his name. Christ.

I don't think she even reads my emails, so here's what I'm going to say next time:

Now God wants me to tell you something!!! (Clever subject line, no?)

Does the State of Tennessee know that their employees are churning out God bothering emails on the public dime? Don't you have a job to do? Also, write a proper email to your friend. Sending a forward is just lazy.

And I shall enclose this picture*


*Picture is irrelevant, but it makes me LOL.

Kids write the darndest things

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the garage for my birth certificate. I didn't find the certificate, however I did stumble upon this little comedy goldmine:


Yeah, I was part of a large family that was too pov to buy nice contact paper for the children's school books. Brown paper all the way for us.

It starts out innocently enough, with a movie review of Batman Returns:


But the signs of a socially retarded middle child who is desperate for attention are revealed soon enough:


Can't take me anywhere.

Of course, there is some negligent parenting and endorsement of illegal activities thrown in the mix...


... not to mention a little dabbling in the occult:

After my aunt scared the hell out of us by pretending to be malevolent spirits coming through on our makeshift ouija board, we watched her make prank phone calls. The same aunt also made car rides more interesting by winding down her window and heckling innocent pedestrians. She was our favourite aunt.

Let's not forget the visit from the fuzz:

I can't exactly remember what the police visit was about. Presumably they were there to arrest my parents for inflicting bingo on their children during the school holidays.

I wonder what was running through my teacher's head when she graded my 'jornaul' week after week. Did she even have the slightest inclination to make further enquiries or perhaps call the authorities? Lord knows I could have benefitted from psychological intervention at age seven. Sheesh.

If I have kids, I'm making them sign a non-disclosure agreement. Their weird family life is going to stay in the vault.

Hot tips for job lookers

Since I got back I've been supporting my crack habit supplementing my income by temping at a recruitment agency. It's easy enough work, mainly typing job applications into the agency's database. I've been there a week, and based on my experiences so far, I have a couple of sizzling hot tips for all you job seekers out there:

1. Learn how to spell 'résumé'. Don't even worry about getting the fancy accents on the e's, just get the spelling right. WTF is a "resumay"?

2. Get a professional e-mail address. A throwaway one with a free provider like Hotmail is fine, but choose an address that is totally vanilla. It should not have any references to sex or zombies, contain the word 'lazy' followed by your first name, invite me to "rub your coconuts", or be an homage to your love of dead dogs.

3. Choose your work referees carefully. Why on earth would you provide a reference from a former job where you: were fired/never showed up/have a multi-million dollar worker's compensation claim currently pending against the company? Privacy legislation be damned, employers love giving the DL on their former employees. Especially the bad ones.

What? You mean this is all common sense?

Fine. I'm in a hurry anyway. I've got an interview for a real job on Monday, and I need to go print my resumay.

I think you're overthinking this

Quick quiz question: Who is the biggest dorkus malorkus in all the land?

Pencils down. Did you guess me? Well, it's true. I feel like the biggest loser, and not in the "I just went on a reality TV show and lost 200 pounds" kind of way.

See, I had an assignment due last week, but our printer wasn't working. I sent the file in an email to my mum's work address, asking her to print it out for me there. She did, I handed it in on time and all was good.

Today, I got the assignment back. I was flicking through to see what my grade was and I noticed that not only had my mum printed the assignment, but also the email exchange between us (WHY, MOTHER?). Of COURSE, I had stapled the printout of the email to the back of the assignment. It wouldn't be so bad if the email was just like, "Hey mum, print this for me". But of course it wasn't. It was a freakin' novel, complete with lame subject line, a tidbit of salacious gossip and hefty sprinklings of me and mum's pet names for each other throughout.

I'm sure my teacher got a good chuckle out of it and has since moved on, but this is going to haunt me forever. It's going to bother me for about a week to the extent where it's the first thing I think about in the morning. Then it will fade away, but not disappear completely.

I guarantee you that I will still be cringing about this when I'm sixty. If not this, then something else. I have a million of these things I don't want to remember, buried in my head just waiting to pop out at any given time. And who cares if other people remember them, because usually friends are tactful enough not to go around reminding you about things you don't want to think about. My mind, on the other hand, has no tact and wants me to think about it all the time!

Quiet, brain, or I'll stab you with a q-tip.

Lola goes to jail

Candy has several connections with the county jail. Her son did a year there for robbery, and then another year for parole violation. During that time, Candy volunteered to teach a life skills class to a small group of the jail's more trusted inmates (I presume that cleaning and housekeeping were not included in the syllabus. Ooh, burn). Also, as a journalist, Candy often visits the jail and courthouse complex to stickybeak through other peoples' arrest records for the edification of the newspaper reading public. As a result, she's pretty tight with the warden of the jail.

One of Candy's life skills class students, Christina, was due to be released from jail on March 3, and was having a little difficulty finding a car to use immediately on her release date. Apparently, it's tough to find anyone to sell a car to you when the transaction begins with a collect call from the local slammer. Hearing about Christina's troubles, Candy immediately volunteered that I would sell my car to her, and set up a date for a test drive with the warden.

Candy and I drove my little car to the jail where Christina and the warden were waiting for us in the parking lot. Candy and I climbed in the back, Christina got in the drivers seat and the warden in the passengers seat next to her. We did a few laps of the parking lot, then the warden told Christina to exit the lot and take the car onto the road.

Christina hadn't driven for a while, but she still had a valid drivers licence and her driving skills seemed fine. During the drive, it occured to me that I should have brought my headscarf and oversized sunglasses (I wanted to look the part if we got into a Thelma & Louise situation). After about 15 minutes of driving the car around Gallatin, the warden told Christina to head back to the jail, which she did. Naturally, I was a little disappointed that the test drive didn't escalate into a wild cross-country crime spree.

When we got back, two great things happened. Christina agreed to buy the car, and the warden gave Candy and I a tour of the jail. You guys, I was so excited. Jails intrigue me. When I was 10, my mum's police sergeant friend gave my sister and I a tour of the North Sydney police station lockup, and I've been hooked ever since. I've been to plenty of decomissioned jails - Mansfield Reformatory, Moundsville Penitentiary and Alcatraz to name a few, but this was my first time inside an actual working jail.

The jail is a three storey building, with each storey split into four quadrants. There is an indoor observation tower at the centre of the four quadrants, spanning the three levels. Candy and I got to go inside the observation tower, which is fronted by two-way mirrors. It was totally voyeuristic and I loved it. My observations from the tower lead me to conclude that the favoured leisure activity for male inmates is playing cards; for female inmates, doing each other's hair.

We then went inside one of the female inmate pods to see the exercise yard. I felt really awkward because this involved walking right by some of the female inmates. Luckily, I wasn't heckled - they just looked up and then went back to doing eachother's hair. One girl recognised Candy from the life skills class, and they had a little reunion.

The exercise yard was depressing. It was a concrete room with no natural light, and a small vent on the wall. In fact, the inmates do not get to see natural light for the duration of their incarceration (with the exception of inmates on work release, like Christina). The warden pointed out a crumpled up piece of paper in the exercise yard, which she told us the inmates used to play ball games.

We then went on to the kitchen, where several inmates were running the trays from lunch through the dishwasher. Candy commented that the food smelled great, and the warden offered to get her a tray. I am positive that Candy would have accepted the offer if I had not shot her my patented withering look.

At the conclusion of the tour, I was ready to buy a magnet to commerate my visit (I collect them), and I was a little disappointed to find that the prison did not sell any. In fact, if I have any criticisms about the county jail, it's that the facility completely lacks a store for visitors to purchase tchotkes and other trinkets. What's with that?

I couldn't leave without a souvenir though, so the warden was kind enough to give me a copy of the jail's commissary order form. Inmates can buy a really weird selection of items -- like individual sachets of mayonnaise. Or something called a "Nutrageous" (offered at the very sensible price of 82c). I am going to scan the list in when I get home from uni tonight so we can discuss.

Blow me away

Nashville is on a tornado warning right now. We live about twenty minutes north of downtown Nashville, in an entirely different area which is not on tornado warning. The satellite pictures on the news show the tornado's path avoiding our area completely. Nevertheless, Candy is in batten-down-the-hatches/Y2K is here/we're gonna die mode.

SHE MADE ME DO A TORNADO DRILL.

I wish I were joking.

In case you were wondering, Candy and I will be congregating in the closet under the stairs if the tornado hits Hendersonville. Never mind that the same closet also functions as storage for Candy's son's belongings, and there's no way that two people could fit in there, squished in with all his junk. How tragic that the broken vacuum cleaner shall survive while I perish.

If the tornado comes, I want to be swept away a la one of those cows in "Twister", only to be deposited dazed but unharmed in an empty field several miles away.

The King & I

Put in some overtime at work tonight which meant I had to catch the late bus. While waiting for the bus, I got chatted up by a guy dressed up like Elvis. He had the entire look going on: the hair, the sideburns, the glasses. He introduced himself as Elvis Junior. Roffle.

When my bus arrived, I got on and he followed me on and sat down next to me. For the entire ride back to Hendersonville, he told me his entire life story, monologue style. Listening to him talk, I realised that this man actually believes he is Elvis' son. He didn't actually say this explicitly, but he dropped some subtle hints. People, I did the math. It wasn't hard. Some choice quotes:
"My father was an entertainer"
"I own a mansion in Memphis but the deed is locked inside a vault hidden in the walls"
"I have ownership in a valuable estate but my half sister sold most of it"

He also wondered aloud "What is the difference between England and Australia?", and described his favourite brand of kitty litter. Every so often he would stop and tell me that he was so excited to meet me, this was his lucky day, etc. The whole time I just kept smiling and making polite comments and hoping that the other passengers didn't think we were together. He got off the bus at Target, promising to look for me at the bus stop on Monday night (yikes).

When Elvis Jr got off, the lady sitting across the aisle from me burst out laughing and said "I guess he really is alive". Then, the lady sitting behind her told us that she has seen Elvis Jr around town a bunch of times, always in costume. The bus driver chimed in and said that the guy is a known local crackpot, and if Elvis Jr's story is correct, the real Elvis would've had to have been 12 when his "son" was born.

I am doing overtime all week next week, so if I run into Elvis Jr at the bus stop again, I am going to get a picture with him.

It's like Rambo, but with an M

Some guy called the office today, and I guess he misheard my name because he kept addressing me as "Mambo". Usually I tell people if they get my name wrong (I frequently hear Flora, Nora, Leah and other fugly names). But Mambo? It's so ridiculous and sassy, I didn't have the heart to correct him. Also, one of my (female) coworkers was repeatedly called Sir by one of her customers, so now I don't feel so bad.

Now onto domestic matters. The lady I rent a room from is the biggest freaking slob and it's starting to drive me a leetle bit up the wall. I was a messy person up until a couple of years ago so I think I have a fairly high threshold for untidiness. Quite frankly though, this shit is bananas. I shall not be surprised if the authorities will eventually have to drag this woman from her fetid apartment, yogurt running down her chin, a la Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.

Mind you, Candy is not all to blame - I should accept some of the responsibility here for ignoring the initial warning signs. On the first day I moved in, I spent about an hour hauling bags filled with trash (food and otherwise) from my new bedroom so I could get the furniture in. Gross. The kitchen is also disgusting. The woman is too lazy to put stuff in the dishwasher so she lets her plates pile up in the sink, still covered in food and crap. It'll sit there for days until she decides to throw them into the dishwasher or buy new dishes. In the meantime, she'll use the faucet so the sink turns into this muddy swamp with dishes and food bits floating everywhere. Her son just moved back home and of course he never learned basic cleaning habits, so the disgusting factor has been doubled!

Now that I have completely trashed (heh heh) Candy and the way she lives, I'll throw in a couple of good points. Candy is a sweet lady and has been very kind to me. The rent is a great deal, particularly for the neighborhood. Also, I think the exposure to godknowshowmanygerms is building me up a killer immune system. Nevertheless. My current issue is: all the spoons have disappeared from the kitchen drawer. I suspect most of them have migrated to Candy's bedroom, sitting in the weeks old bowls of sour milk that surround her bed and computer desk. I did spot one spoon, but it was in the depths of the sink swamp, and there's no way I'm putting my hand in there. Tonight I ate my ice-cream with a fork.

Poor Mambo.