That point

It has come to this, I have reached a new level of sadness or as some may refer to it as a new level of maturity. After many years of a particular method I have discovered a new way, a more efficient way to...
Wait for it.
...a more efficient way to fold socks.
I had always folded them one into the other by folding them in half however today I found via a YouTube tutorial video that if the socks are folded three ways that it makes for a more compact package making for a more organised sock drawer.

Yep I've reached that point which quite frankly I'm not too fussed about. It's about time I had more organised socks, maybe too early for that to e re most memorable part of my day. Tomorrow, I'm going to get out more.

What happens when the star falls

Im washed up. I’m a has been. Ive had my moment in the sun and now the night has set in. When people speak of washed up reality stars, I felt the pain. I know what its like. I was that has been.

A poster in a break room told me that I would be a star. It said sign up, so I did. Then I was a supermarket shop assistant but if I signed up, I could be a supermarket shop assistant on TV and star in a Woolworth's commercial.

To be fair it wasn't that big of deal, I just sent in a photo and filled out a form then I was booked in to audition. I arrived at the audition late in the day, the audition directer had already seen his fair share of wanna be actors more so wannabe superstars for like the lure of reality television many saw this as their big break. He was tired and asked if I could come back the next day. I had to work, it was today or nothing.

I went into the room facing the camera, he sat me in front a proceeded to ask questions about my cooking habits, I responded honestly stating that since I still lived with my parents, I didn't cook much at all. I spun some story about stir fry and hammed it up a bit in front of the camera. It was easy to do as the camera an I are old friends, you don’t spend years working behind a camera without gaining some insight as to how to look into one.

The director was happy with the performance and hinted that I might just have the gig.

I left the audition feeling all giddy, I was going to be a star!

I got a letter with a date for a second audition, this time with the director of the commercial as well as the previous audition director. In a tiny studio in St Kilda I again sat in from of a camera however this time I had lines. I read something about Woolworth's having all of your christmas needs, Ham and Lobster. 

“That’s not kosher” I stated.

“are you Jewish?” the commercial director asked.

“No,” I replied, “I just have a big nose, curly hair and happen to be called Benjamin.”

Awkward racial humor but I got a laugh and a positive response to my “acting”, so much so that unofficially gave me a role in the ad.

I didn't think much of the ad until weeks later when the manager came up to me and said congratulations.

“why?” I asked

“you got the role in the ad” he stated casually

“shit!” I exclaimed and then promptly apologized for exclaiming.

I flew up to Brisbane for a weekend for the shooting of the ad, all expenses paid of course.

On the Sunday we drove out to the store in the middle of nowhere, we had to shoot in Queensland as its the only state that has stores closed on a Sunday.Amid the craziness of the film set, I did my line.

“and some tender Woolworth's select frozen peas and mashed potatoes”

Then I added my own ad-lib.

“Its too easy”

I got it it three shots. They then took my photo from many angles and that was it. I was done. For the rest of the day I just sat around and ate from the catering truck. 

The ad was forgotten for months until one day I got an invitation to a managers meeting and the launch of the new commercial campaign.

All the state managers and assistant managers were hustled into a large auditorium where the general manager spoke like a televangelist about how great Woolworth's was. Then they showed the ads.

All.

Except.

Mine.

The marketing manager rose to thank all the participants, she read out the names, calling us to stand as our names were. 

As my name was read, it a fit of indignation, I exclaimed, “you cut me!”

The room went silent, the marketing manager looked awkward and tried to carry on, I just stood there shrugging at her. She continued with her spiel.

After the event I caught up with some of my “co-stars”, we decided to consume as much as the free spread as we could a a form of subtle revenge.

I watched a bit of TV after that though I never did see the ad. Thus I was like the reality stars spoken of; promised fame and perhaps fortune but ultimately paid minimum wage and cut from the show. I had signed a contact stating that they could use my image to sell their product and like reality television the “performer” ultimately has no say in how they are portrayed. I was shown the way that the producers wanted not the way that I really am. In reality I hate frozen peas and would never endorse their consumption.

Books for sale

So I've decided to have a bit of a book clean out, if you want any of the below books please let me know with offers of money.

Title	Author
7 Biblical Truths You Won't Hear in Church: But Might Change Your Life	David A. Rich
Against All Odds: My Story	Chuck Norris, Ken Abraham
Bible Study Made Easy	Mark Water
Billy	Pamela Stephenson
Bravemouth: Living with Billy Connolly	Pamela Stephenson
Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus	Mark Yaconelli
Drama Ministry	Steve Pederson
Dude, Where's My Country?	Michael Moore
Every Young Man's Battle Guide: Weapons for the War Against Sexual Temptation	Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker
Every Young Man's Battle: Strategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation	Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, Mike Yorkey
Face Down	Matt Redman
Freemasonry Invisible Cult	HARRIS JACK
Fruit That Will Last	Tim Hawkins
How to Live Like a King's Kid: Rollicking and Incisive...the Reflections and Recollections of an Engineerings Executive	Harold Hill, Irene Harrell
I Peed On Fellini	David Stratton
In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?	Charles M. Sheldon
Leaders Who Will Last: How to Become the Effective Youth Leader That God Really Wants	Tim Hawkins
Master Plan of Evangelism, The	Robert E. Coleman
Not Quite Straight	Jeffrey Smart
One Hundred Years Of Solitude	Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Provocative Faith: Walking Away from Ordinary	Matthew Paul Turner
Questions of Life	Nicky Gumbel
Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer	J.Oswald Sanders
Stupid White Men: ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!	Michael Moore
The Arts in Your Church: A Practical Guide	Fiona Bond
The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within	Erwin Raphael McManus
The Case for Christ-Youth Edition: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus	Lee Strobel
The Christian Culture Survival Guide: The Misadventures of an Outsider on the Inside	Matthew Paul Turner
The Father Heart of God: Experiencing the Depths of His Love for You	Floyd McClung
The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?	Rick Warren
The Way of the Wild Heart Manual: A Personal Map for Your Masculine Journey	John Eldredge
Through Gates of Splendour: The Five Missionary Martyrs of Ecuador	Elisabeth Elliot
Tolkien's Ordinary Virtues : Exploring the Spiritual Themes of the Lord of the Rings	Mark Eddy Smith
Visions & Voyages: The Story of Celtic Spirituality	Fay Sampson
What You Didn't Learn from Your Parents About Christianity: A Guide to a Spirited Subject	Matthew Paul Turner

King of beers?

I was thinking about beer the other day, more so about what the brand of beer one chooses to drink says about the drinker.
I drink a lot of european and beers from microbreweries. from this, one can deduce that I am some kind of pretentious hipster twat which of course has some truth in it for if you were to walk into the room at this very moment, you would notice that I am wearing rather tight jeans which is the mark of a hipster.
boutique beers and tight jeans does not a hipster make. I wear tight jeans because i have great legs for it. a fact that i have been told on numerous occasions and if this be the case, why not flaunt it and why not flaunt it in a brunswick street pub drinking German beer.

I drink different beers to experience a wide range of flavours, from the German weissbier to an English Lager. I drink microbrewery beer out of respect for the brewing process. I drink my Dad's homebrew because he offers it to me and I'm to polite to refuse.

My brother in law drinks Budweiser which has been liked by some as making love in a canoe, (I shan't elaborate on this to its proper extent, what is implied is that the beer is "fornicating close to water) he almost exclusively this american variety. I don't mean to judge him based on his choice of brew however I wish to make not of the advertising slogan of the aforesaid beer.
Budweiser markets itself as "the king of beers." I find this odd. To think that the most popular beer in the worlds foremost republic would market itself as "king" seem sat odds with the US system of government. Budweiser should be calling itself "the president of beers," but then I realised, for a beer to  be president, someone has to vote for said president which rather a lot of hassle. there i the whole election thing which could result in Budweiser having to change its marketing every four years.
based on this,  I can see why they went with the king option. they could simply declare it "king" and no one could refute it.

I am looking forward too the day when another beer rises up and declares itself king, there would be a brewing war of the roses. two giants of brewing go up against each other only to have a small micro brewery ride in from afar and usurp the crown creating a mighty kingdom of hipsters in the process.  

Sock puppet theatre

Ladies and Gentlemen,

below is an example of what happens when one is studying a course in how to make television and one needs to create content. Sock puppets; i have found are endlessly engaging and actually are quite amusing. below is what happens when a couple of nerds combine a couple of old socks to lovingly recreate pivotal scenes from famous movies.

Story from the old blog: The Notebook (not the film)

Story from the old blog: The Notebook (not the film)

I’d often write things down on little bits of paper, ideas mostly. Things that I would one day type of my computer to share with the wider world.The trouble with doing this is that I would invariably loose the little scraps of paper on which I wrote upon. I would be the back of an envelope or the back of some printed document the I would most likely never read again.

I would hope that theses scraps of paper with the golden words written thereon would be recycled and perhaps turned into something useful. A pizza box for example though I would disgust me greatly if it were a pizza box for La Porchetta as I loath both their pizza and their restaurant however I shouldn't be too hard of the pizzas, it was after all the gnocchi that gave me the food Poisoning.

In counter the lost paper scraps, i bought a series of notebooks. i have boxes of notebooks  brimming with skit ideas, scripts and other random musings. it was quite hard to find the right notebook, on that was the right size with the right spacing between lines as well as the right leaf thickness. Too thin and the writing on the other side of the leaf would show Through, too think and it was less of a problem than to thin but the pages would be just too cardboard like.

After years of different notebooks form a humble exercise book to a cloth bound hard cover A4 tome, I found my baby bear book; it was just right. A little black mole skein book unlined and bound in black leather. It may not have had vellum pages though at least an animal was sacrificed to the god of writing to encase the whitish yellow pages. 

Now that I had the ultimate notebook, I needed the ultimate pen. No cheap stick would suffice. My top drawer was filled with pens that were no match for my moleskin and superior intellect. I had tried fine liners, gel pens, kilometricos (of which I only got half a kilometre out of, poor milage) I'd even considered a quill and ink.

Surely there must be a happy medium. There was. I found my ultimate pen to match my ultimate notebook, in the form of a fountain pen. The variety of pen that many of the great novels had been written with and various treaties signed with. The cursive script from this pen looked amazing in my notebook.

Now I had all of my words in one place and depository of in that I could share with the wider world. Only I didn't. ‘ write in my note book and forget about it, which is why I'm now typing this on my computer, for its easier to copy and paste from a document than a notebook. 

I'm never shopping here again

This is a word to all of the people who actually think that minions who work at national or multinational retailer actually give a fat rats clacker when you say, "I'm never shopping here again."
For us, it's not a negative thing, it is the polar opposite. If you never shop here again, we never have to deal with you again.

A couple of points as to why we don't care.

1. We get paid regardless of whether you shop here or not. Luckily for me I am paid by the hour, you, dear customer just happen to be passing though one of the many hours that I get paid for. I don't care if it is you or someone else, I still get paid.

2. I am at work because I get paid to be at work I have no vested financial interest at all in the products. Actually this is similar to the previous point., though regardless if I'm selling coffee or machines for counting hubcaps on a freeway, I don't own the business.
I am a contracted employee, who legally has to be paid for their time.

3. I actually want to help you. I want to give you the best service you can get and I will do that to the best of my ability however I am bound by certain rules and guidelines set out by my employer.
If these do not match up with your unreasonable expectations I will trying my best to find a mutually agreeable solution. If you decide to go down the whole "I'm never shopping here again" tanti, I suggest you grow up. Sometimes in life you don't get what you want. Suck it up. Life is not about you and the customer is not always right.

When a customer does this in front of their children what example is it setting?
Its the same as the classic temper tantrums of a two year old when they want something that the parents are big going to give them. They think in their young minds that if they yell and scream that they will get what they want. Parents will say no to teach them that life is not about getting what you want all the time. Which is quite reasonable as life is not always fair.
Unfortunately this lesson is forgotten in a consumerist society in which "consumer rights" is bandied around like a capitalist magna carta. The truth is that the customer didn't get what they want and will piss and moan until they get it Claiming that it is "not fair."

Life is not fair. Deal with it.

Let's make a deal dear customer. I see myself as an upright man. A man of my word. If I say I will do something then I will do it.
If you decide to use the, "I'm not shopping here again" line, I will hold you to it and do what I can to make sure you are honest in your statement.

Driver

This is a short piece that I wrote in a creative writing class. enjoy.


Driver

“You can drive,” said Tom as he threw the keys to Mike

 “No, you can drive” responded Mike, throwing them back

“Are you sure? i always drive and i think its about your turn.”

Mike stood still in the car park next to the passenger side door waiting for Tom to unlock the car.

“its easier if you drive, its already late and i’m not used to driving your car.”

“You’re not used to driving any car,” retorted Tom.

Mike stared at Tom in stony faced silence.

“C’mon,” continued Tom, “Its an auto, its easy to drive. Driving is like riding a bike. you never forget. What has it been? two years?”

“three,” answered Mike Curtly.

“Why wont you drive Mike?”

“Its Too Dark”

“Dark!” Tom looked at Mike mockingly. “Have you seen the headlights on this baby? Blue LED’s. they turn night into day.”

“Your car doesn’t have passenger airbags.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to kill you!” yelled Mike in a panic.

“OK,” reassured Tom, “I’ll Drive again.”