...then I suppose I'd better make it worth your time.
Right, so, London. Trains, bus, explosions - Bad Things, and you know all the rest. Emergency services score a million points for responding Very Well (because, y'know, London's never been hit by terrorists before). The bombs obviously weren't French; French bombs would explode into hundreds of scraps of paper labelled with either "Hmmph!" or a random insult. They've found timers, so no suicide bombers. That also helps with the theory that the bus bomb was actually on its way to a Tube station.
At this point I digress to say that if you plan to hit Sydney's rail network with timed bombs, you're going to do a bit of damage to the platforms and completely miss the trains. For the international audience, here's a sample CityRail announcement: The... 10:24... train to... Central... will arrive approximately... forty-seven minutes... late for Hell freezing over.
As we all know, the whole world feels for London (except, presumably, whoever made and planted the bombs). They've even arranged for special weather here as a sign of solidarity - blank, grey skies that drizzle rain at a rate designed to be as supremely miserable as possible. Londoners now have our condolences for both the bombings and the weather. In a further show of solidarity, I basically just went about my day as planned.
That day consisted of Shopping. I almost like Shopping. I can look at various widgets and bits and pieces and thingies and stuff all day long without a care in the world; it's just the people that piss me off. I almost felt like buying that lovely replica of Anduril and giving random irritating passersby a whole new kind of extreme makeover. This is all for a very special reason - it's now the dreaded School Holidays, which means two things. The first is that irritating little kids are everywhere; I think the cute, sweet ones that people always tell you about just hide behind them so that you don't notice and wind up with your very own HOMICIDAL RAGE to display on your coffee table. The second is that all kinds of ultra-temporary salesfolk crawl out of the woodwork.
There were a few things I had to do today, which were compiled into a vague shopping list yesterday (long before SBS decided that they'd watch Bronski & Bernstein and then show BBC news afterwards). This list basically came down to:
First, I'd like to talk about headphones. There's a whole heap of magic numbers on the back, which I learned to decipher a short while back with the aid of Google. What I wanted was simple - a good pair of closed headphones which would be comfortable, reasonably long-lived, and comfortably wearable backwards. This is because my speakers, into which I plug my headphones,are useless reverse the stereo channels for headphones. I've found a pair that does everything I want, and they're on right now, and Winamp's slowly turning my brain to slush with music. Yay!
Right. Toys. When you grow up, I imagine that you either don't like the toy department anymore, or you usually pretend you don't like it anymore. If not, then I'm just a very tall child who can drink and gamble and buy sharp, pointy things. Toy departments are most fun when there's no kids about, because then there's no-one to compete with for all the toys. My favourite spots in the toy department are the plush aisle, and the Aisle of Noisy Things. The plush aisle is an obvious kind of fun, but the Aisle of Noisy Things is a special place. This is because this aisle is home to Elmos, which all dance and make noise. There's often a large number of them comfortably accessible, so once you know where to poke you can set of a shelf full of Elmos and have them all do their dance at once. By far the best for this is the Tickle Me Elmo, which will fall off the shelf if surrounded by inappropriately giggly Elmos. (If you want to try this, remember that Elmos laugh hardest when you poke them in the crotch.) I've yet to see what the Shout Elmo does, though.
Apparently there's a kid-sized Star Wars pinball machine that's fallen free of the merchandising monolith that is Lucasfilm. Presumably, when a ball drops1 it says "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", one of the iconic lines of the franchise - right up there with "We're doomed", "May the force be with you", "Bloopety bleep twiddletweedlebloop Beep!" and the million variations on "I will destroy you". It'd be fun to turn it on, and have Alec Guinness' voice say something like "These are your father's flippers - an elegant bit of the table, not as clumsy or as random as pop bumpers." PErhaps worse is their Darth Vader bike thingy, which I diodn't pause to examine and don't really plan to.
Next stop was an electronics shop. Gadgets and bits and pieces of gadgets line the walls, driving me to wonder what kind of havoc I could wreak if I knew more about electrical appliances than how to plug them in and, in a number of cases, use them. I have no idea what's inside an electrical appliance, apart from a large number of Thingies. For all I know, a salamander (cooking device) really is powered by a salamander. Anyway, that's where I actually found headphones. They're shiny and silvery and sound quite good.
Lastly, my journey around the supermarket was interesting. It took me until I was in the queue for the checkout to realise that I was carrying tea and biscuits. Oh, and crumpets. And people here tend to think I'm from England, despite that I've never been there2. I think it might be a bit of a mix of how I usually sound and how I say things, which is surprisingly useful when people ask for directions3. I think I made an extra special effort to sound 'Striiine6.
1probably not the best phrase for a children's toy.
2except English people, who just as often think I sound somewhat $NORTH_AMERICAN. What's even more interesting is that my German sounds very German, just not from any particular city. Seriously. People have asked. German people have asked.
3I'm pathetic at giving directions. I can find it for you, I can help you get there, but I can't tell you how to get there. This backfired on me once when asked for directions by tourists from Manchester4. Being smart people, they even had a map so I could just point and waffle.They went their merry way. I gave my palm directions to my face.
4Who, thankfully, don't like the football team. That would've seen them deliberately lost5.
5Too many footnotes. *nodnod*
67Which is roughly how a country person says Australian. No, seriously. I grew up in the country, and they really do sound like that. If you want to try it at home, talk without any lip movement at all.
7Waaay too many footnotes.
Right, so, London. Trains, bus, explosions - Bad Things, and you know all the rest. Emergency services score a million points for responding Very Well (because, y'know, London's never been hit by terrorists before). The bombs obviously weren't French; French bombs would explode into hundreds of scraps of paper labelled with either "Hmmph!" or a random insult. They've found timers, so no suicide bombers. That also helps with the theory that the bus bomb was actually on its way to a Tube station.
At this point I digress to say that if you plan to hit Sydney's rail net
As we all know, the whole world feels for London (except, presumably, whoever made and planted the bombs). They've even arranged for special weather here as a sign of solidarity - blank, grey skies that drizzle rain at a rate designed to be as supremely miserable as possible. Londoners now have our condolences for both the bombings and the weather. In a further show of solidarity, I basically just went about my day as planned.
That day consisted of Shopping. I almost like Shopping. I can look at various widgets and bits and pieces and thingies and stuff all day long without a care in the world; it's just the people that piss me off. I almost felt like buying that lovely replica of Anduril and giving random irritating passersby a whole new kind of extreme makeover. This is all for a very special reason - it's now the dreaded School Holidays, which means two things. The first is that irritating little kids are everywhere; I think the cute, sweet ones that people always tell you about just hide behind them so that you don't notice and wind up with your very own HOMICIDAL RAGE to display on your coffee table. The second is that all kinds of ultra-temporary salesfolk crawl out of the woodwork.
There were a few things I had to do today, which were compiled into a vague shopping list yesterday (long before SBS decided that they'd watch Bronski & Bernstein and then show BBC news afterwards). This list basically came down to:
- Headphones
- Stamps
- Tea
- Crumpets
- Biscuits (?)
- Chocolate (!)
First, I'd like to talk about headphones. There's a whole heap of magic numbers on the back, which I learned to decipher a short while back with the aid of Google. What I wanted was simple - a good pair of closed headphones which would be comfortable, reasonably long-lived, and comfortably wearable backwards. This is because my speakers, into which I plug my headphones,
Right. Toys. When you grow up, I imagine that you either don't like the toy department anymore, or you usually pretend you don't like it anymore. If not, then I'm just a very tall child who can drink and gamble and buy sharp, pointy things. Toy departments are most fun when there's no kids about, because then there's no-one to compete with for all the toys. My favourite spots in the toy department are the plush aisle, and the Aisle of Noisy Things. The plush aisle is an obvious kind of fun, but the Aisle of Noisy Things is a special place. This is because this aisle is home to Elmos, which all dance and make noise. There's often a large number of them comfortably accessible, so once you know where to poke you can set of a shelf full of Elmos and have them all do their dance at once. By far the best for this is the Tickle Me Elmo, which will fall off the shelf if surrounded by inappropriately giggly Elmos. (If you want to try this, remember that Elmos laugh hardest when you poke them in the crotch.) I've yet to see what the Shout Elmo does, though.
Apparently there's a kid-sized Star Wars pinball machine that's fallen free of the merchandising monolith that is Lucasfilm. Presumably, when a ball drops1 it says "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", one of the iconic lines of the franchise - right up there with "We're doomed", "May the force be with you", "Bloopety bleep twiddletweedlebloop Beep!" and the million variations on "I will destroy you". It'd be fun to turn it on, and have Alec Guinness' voice say something like "These are your father's flippers - an elegant bit of the table, not as clumsy or as random as pop bumpers." PErhaps worse is their Darth Vader bike thingy, which I diodn't pause to examine and don't really plan to.
Next stop was an electronics shop. Gadgets and bits and pieces of gadgets line the walls, driving me to wonder what kind of havoc I could wreak if I knew more about electrical appliances than how to plug them in and, in a number of cases, use them. I have no idea what's inside an electrical appliance, apart from a large number of Thingies. For all I know, a salamander (cooking device) really is powered by a salamander. Anyway, that's where I actually found headphones. They're shiny and silvery and sound quite good.
Lastly, my journey around the supermarket was interesting. It took me until I was in the queue for the checkout to realise that I was carrying tea and biscuits. Oh, and crumpets. And people here tend to think I'm from England, despite that I've never been there2. I think it might be a bit of a mix of how I usually sound and how I say things, which is surprisingly useful when people ask for directions3. I think I made an extra special effort to sound 'Striiine6.
1probably not the best phrase for a children's toy.
2except English people, who just as often think I sound somewhat $NORTH_AMERICAN. What's even more interesting is that my German sounds very German, just not from any particular city. Seriously. People have asked. German people have asked.
3I'm pathetic at giving directions. I can find it for you, I can help you get there, but I can't tell you how to get there. This backfired on me once when asked for directions by tourists from Manchester4. Being smart people, they even had a map so I could just point and waffle.They went their merry way. I gave my palm directions to my face.
4Who, thankfully, don't like the football team. That would've seen them deliberately lost5.
5Too many footnotes. *nodnod*
67Which is roughly how a country person says Australian. No, seriously. I grew up in the country, and they really do sound like that. If you want to try it at home, talk without any lip movement at all.
7Waaay too many footnotes.
