Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Franzy fights on

And here's what I wrote in the (surprisingly ample) feedback section of the Greater Union customer survey after buying some online tickets:

"You cinemas need to start being up front about why allocated seating has been introduced. No contacts know. The staff shrug and smile and take your wad of cash. It inconveniences patrons and restricts the enjoyment of my movie-going experience to be sat next to a stranger and not be able to choose the location of my seat upon entering the cinema.
Sharing elbow room with someone I've never met was never on my list of Things To Do At The Movies.
Why the gritted-teeth is it on there now?
To phase out ticketing staff and ease us into online bookings and buy-your-ticket-here pillars? You're competing with 50" plasmas and surround-sound in people's homes! The only thing you've GOT over that is customer service. I've had friends who now avoid going to the cinemas now because of allocated seating. My mother gave up her 10-year membership to Palace Nova on the back of this short-sightedness. She wrote them a long letter to explain why. Customer service? She didn't even receive a reply. You try telling me that you're a different company who listens to the concerns of its patrons? Rubbish. To theatre-goers, you are now all one and the one same. Brand loyalty is dead dead dead.
Don't give me that bluster about Gold seating, either. $35 for the chance at a hot nachos in the second reel is NOT a fun family outing. OR a low-pressure date. The cinema used to be the place where teenagers could meet up and not have to make awkward conversation. Now you've priced them right out of the market. Wake up.
If you don't want customers, just shut down now with dignity and stop taking everyone's money and enjoyment with you."

You may thank me in the comments when allocated seating is abolished and a quiet young man with a side-part and a small torch is guiding you to your $5 seat.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I don't care if it IS an OH&S issue

if I come into the lunchroom and there are bowls, cups, spoons, food containers or coffee plungers sitting in the sink, soaking in cold water, grease and cabbage, I will assume that, because they are in the sink (o ye crucible of cleansing!), they are all clean and washed up and only in need of neat stacking on the drying rack, which I am more than happy to do for you.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Even though I can barely hear anything being said in a less-than-silent environment and every year I have to turn the radio up one more notch, all those concerts were totally worth it.


Saturday, September 26, 2009

Dear Dan, Please code ...

... a Facebook app that lifts your workplace's website layout and transfers all of your time-wasting garbage into a page which, at a glance from your workmates or boss, looks exactly as though you were just checking the company's homepage. ©

Friday, September 25, 2009

Franzy's stats indicate that...

... if an arsehole in a wallowy, neutered, gone-to-fat-but-still-taking-up-space four-wheel-drive cuts you off, doesn't let you in or runs over your dog because they were too busy rubbing their nipples with fluffy tufts of cotton wool teased from the padding with which they surround their brains and souls, they are 95% more likely to be driving a Toyota Kluger.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Monday, September 21, 2009

It's a gift for a worthy foe ...

Yes, name your condom after a people famous for constructing a massive, sturdy symbol of masculinity, but did it have to be the same folks who were famous for tricking everybody into bringing that gargantuan totem inside, only for it to break open, spilling out death, destruction and Brad Pitt?

Sunday, September 20, 2009

How can I tell that this isn't some elaborate piece of crappy performance art; The Truman Show, but with a busker's hat?

Friday, September 18, 2009

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

So, I assume that because you're crossing the picket line and working, you'll be passing on all the extra pay you receive as a result of the industrial action to the union?

Monday, September 14, 2009

You know you're tragically old when ...

... you reminisce, without irony, about the soft, sweet grunting of a 5 ¼ inch floppy drive because you have actually owned computers that had them.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Saturday, September 12, 2009

The more silent you are trying to be after everyone else has gone to bed, the more steel pots will slip out of your hands while you're doing the dishes.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Fear is ...

... starting him on mashed pumpkin and, as the weekend looms, hearing in detail about exactly what happens in that nappy when I'm at work.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

You can't possibly imagine the embarrassment and contempt I feel for the twenty-one year old me who didn't have the dignity, the restraint and self-confidence not to unsheathe a big, rubbery exclamation mark at the end of just about every significant sentence I ever tried to have published, like a plaid-clad comedian demonstrating when the punchline has occurred in a routine about bitchy mother-in-laws and poor-quality airline food by slapping a brass gong with a dildo.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

SSS EXtra!

I'm 16, I'm sailing the world, I'm getting my pins out!


And now I am a ... what?

I was a clown in a touring youth circus, I've written a joke book, I own a beautiful leather motor-bike jacket I bought in Chapel St and no motorbike, I married an Italian writer, I can cook a tastier pasta sauce than any of her relatives, I buy, read and enjoy car magazines, I review young adult books for a specialist magazine published by Melbourne Uni, I can juggle fire, I can hold a conversation in German as long as nobody starts discussing biomechanics, politics or the war (zing!), I can ski, but not surf, I rent, I will listen to industrial hip-hop as soon as The Flight of the Conchords, my dad teaches English in China, my mum teaches everything here, my son could hold his head up by six weeks, my best man is a professional acrobat and physiotherapist, my oldest friend has a big hand in just about everything you see on the ABC, my third oldest friend got married on an iceberg and I can skol a pint of pale no worries.

Monday, September 7, 2009

I am a ... what?

I garden most weekends, fall asleep in front of ABC crime drama, know about lawn mowers, own more tracksuit pants than those suitable for the public eye, have a subscription to ABR, listen to 891 Mornings with Matt'n'Dave, complain at the video store, call the place where I rent DVDs "the video store" as though it were some retailer of Betamax tapes from beyond the black stump, own antiques, enjoy shopping for antiques more than clothes, drink lattes, maintain facial hair on purpose rather than a result of laziness and buy and drive Toyotas because my mechanic recommends them.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

200 posts in blogger doesn't seem like a lot (especially when 60 or so are only a sentence long).

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Friday, September 4, 2009

Since I checked with the council and found out that you don't own the entire street, stop fucking with my rear-view mirror.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Ever finished drying yourself after a shower and found a pube on your tongue?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

If someone asks you "Can I ask you a question?" and you answer "Yes", is the conversation over?

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32