KFC is strange.

I have started work at KFC. Well, training. The potato-gravy station and the drive through headsets and the tills and menu and burger formulae, and most daunting of all, the chicken frying place in the back, it gives me a sense of confusion, uncertainty, juvenile helplessness and the tiny smidgen of hope that maybe one day backstage will be not so daunting.
Some little grievances. Or Trivialities:

• Why do the staff at KFC call potatoes and gravy 'prep'?
• Why are the names of all the burgers and combos so flipping frivolous? Can't you just call it burger A, B or C? it'd make remembering wrapper colours easier. Rainbow order with alphabet order. There, no stupid 'Zinger burger' or 'Works' or 'Oh dammit the wrapper's round the wrong way, now it says Zinger instead of Original'.
• Why is there so much strange innuendo amongst conversation backstage? Like, the things they talk about, just from 5 hours paperwork in the office area (a nice messy corner by the door of backstage), 3 of which were not actually backstage, I heard quite a bit of stuff one would not expect to hear in everyday convo. Maybe it's just me, but if I'm a newbie in society, well doesn't mean I can adapt (and I don't want) to dodgy talk every 2 minutes I work.
• Why on earth, I mean this seriously, like, the most serious of my grievances, why on flipping earth do we have to invite a customer back TWICE after they get their food? It's not as if they didn't hear you the first time. And it makes you sound dorkomanic. And it's awkward. Can you imagine it though? 'Enjoy your meal. Hope to see you next time! See you another time!' And it sounds just as bad using different forms of it: 'Hope you come back! See you next time!' It's time consuming, a big fat mouthful, and they mean the same flipping thing.
  

Dentophobiacs' worst fears confirmed.

This picture scares the living daylights out of me. Even though I can see and know it was a set up, for some fun, to scare vulnerables around the world, it is still rather uncomforting to see some people's worst fears in reality. Or by pixel.

The victim's tongue must be shreddedly gone if this was real. And I'm just glad they don't have blood squirting out of the mouth.
HEY
why is there no blood on the dentist's coat?
why is the light not on? surely dentistry is an occupation of precision and accuracy?

To think I once considered dentistry for the future...

no, no.

Visitors

My dad's friend from somewhere,
A man, plus his daughter.
The daughter, about 13 or 14, nice, voice too high and sweet and cute for her but hey, she seemed like a nice person, very polite.
The man. Short, happy, a bit on the *acquired aesthetics* side. (Think of it as in, acquired taste.)
He has a thing with photography. And I don't know if they planned this or if he decided to bring his hobby with him, but after the protocol tour of our house and its exteriors (accompanied by fitting oohs and wows at a particular tree or perhaps the height of the ceiling of the living room).

So, he snaps cheerfully away at my younger sister with our cat, I dunno, sure, go ahead, I think, as I continue to live on the internet. (Blogs are so fun.)
And then they make me go into the living room, to take photos of ME. I don't know about you, but at the time, I felt a little bit too uncertain about where this was going to go. I don't like solo photos by other people when the other people aren't professionals. And this guy, well, he wasn't in a company shirt, nor did he have a name badge. It was just 'nameless guy with a face that certainly did not make me want to smile at the camera'.
I mean - if it was, say, a lovely plump old lady who resembled a bit of Mrs Weasley - well then I'd have certainly did my best to look nice. Except this guy was no Mrs Weasley. You have no idea how off-putting and creepy it felt, him, circling around as you sit there on the edge of the fireplace (I know how that sounds), and he tells you to put your head to the left and relax and look natural and then to stop leaning against the wall and smile and show some teeth and then to look happy and to do this and that and OMG I think, this guy is so not my best friend at the moment.
Especially with his face and voice, well I only felt like cracking his stupid camera lens.

Now - don't get me wrong. I like photos. If you know me, then you'll know I like to jump to the front of every group photo and strike a dramatic something or other. But this was not with friends, this was not mucking around on a digital, this was exploitation of innocence of a teenage ego.

So you ask me, why did I not crack his stupid camera lens?
Because my dad was sitting there and well my sister had already had some shots taken so what have me right to punch a parent's friend?
The worst part is -
After a final few family portraits, he says to my mum to not worry, he'll edit her wrinkles off.
EXCUSE ME?
I was so flipping flabbergasted: Should I have smiled, that he was so considerate to think of the wrinkles (which by the way are nice and motherly) or should I have frowned, that he just called my mum a wrinkled old prune?
No, I did not want pics of a 24-looking plastic for a mum.

Now, lemme see those pics.

Das Leben der Anderen

Awesome movie.
Really.
After seeing it with some cool folks from and not from my German class, I've come to the conclusion that the director or producer is someone who is that type of person who can really come up with super brilliant puns.

The best (possibly) line from the movie, the last bit, goes like this.

So a guy is buying a book that is dedicated to him.
The bookstore salesperson asks,
'Shall I gift wrap it for you?'
The guy replies,
'No, it's for me.'

How BRILLIANT is that?

Special thanks to Moria, who tried (and failed) to turn the lights off for us all, and to Lily, for her attempts at covering the eyes of my younger sister (the movie wasn't suitable for children under 17 without parental guidance and restriction - and we all were, except Leandrie, Happy Birthday Leandrie for the recent Tuesday!)

I'm sad I didn't get to see the first of these movies, and I am definitely going to the next one.

Radio

Awesomeness. I wait, for hours on end, waiting for a song from my dearest band (read the About me to see which dear band this is), and turns out they didn't even make it to The Edge's Top 20 last night. I steam at that. Maybe I should phone up and vote too.

Super internet based radio show, the best one around so far and by far, not including Lily and Moria's iTeens show on Community radio, is Man of the Hour, from idobi.com, Fridays or Thursdays or some time... I shall add the specifics later, after consulting Casey who introduced them to me...
Man of the Hour shows are usually about a hour ish. You can download the podcasts for free on iTunes. The talkers are Patrick Langlois and Sebastien Lefebvre (please tell me how to pronounce these names, I crave French ability), Seb being guitarist and backing vocalist from Simple Plan, Patrick being one of the guys from Role Model Clothing Line.

They are actually cool people.

'If I catch you spamming, I'm going to gut you like the fish you are!'
Quote Patrick.
Joke:
3 guys are having dinner and complaining about their wives.
The first guy says: 'My wife is so silly! She doesn't have her driver's license yet, she doesn't have a car, and she bought these chrome rims the other day, for some wheels, which she doesn't even have, so we have these chrome rims just lying in our garage, how silly is that?!'
The guys all nod in agreement, but the second guy starts:
'Well, if you think that's silly, my wife and I are shopping around for a new house, because we live in this little flat, and she bought a huge hot water cylinder the other day, for no reason because we don't have a house to put it in, so we have this hot water cylinder just lying in our house not plugged into anything, how silly is that?!'
The guys all nod in agreement, but the third guy starts:
'Well, if you think that's silly, my wife just left with 3 other girlfriends to go on a holiday, and she bought this huge box of condoms, and she doesn't even have a penis!'
That was a David joke. Apparently. David Desrosiers, also from Simple Plan, bassist and backing vocalist.
Does my obsession with SP show through yet? :P

Blogging, button problems and msn

So far, I have 2 mateys who use blogspot. THREE. That is a flipping record. I have never had 2 mateys on blogspot before, ever. So Lily and Moria make me happy.
Moria and I have just come to the conclusion that Lily's blogs beat all.
She has this thing, that makes her click. I call it a switch.

There is something wrong with my apostrophe button right now. Every time I try to click it, it comes up with a stupid "quickfind" thing. Only pressing SHIFT+apostrophe button types anything, and that is a speechmark.
I suppose this is the end of my contractions. Goodbye, can"t and won"t and I"m!

Msn is super. What with voice recording and video calling, gone are the needs for long distance calls over the phone! Gone are telephone-call bills! Except that you need internet for msn which costs, and you also need a computer, and webcam preferably and microphone also preferably.
I have been conversing with cousins in Aussie and seeing their faces and hearing their voices at no extra cost is exciting. I sound like a flippin' (OMG the apostrophe works again! YAY I am happy) msn sales representative. If it was sold and packaged in handy door to door sale boxes.