Sunday, February 12, 2006

Swingamajig

I love Melbourne I really do. I love old people actually enjoying themselves too. Nothing better to see. Work in a call centre you learn to hate old people. You get the overwhelming impression that old people have nothing better to do than bitch and complain. They must secretly love cold callers for reinforcing their misery. Why I became so hardened against old people I don’t think I’d shed a tear if a heat wave wiped them out.
But the Melbourne swing festival is something else. Old dudes jumping, and twirling around in shined up two-tone shoes. Having a good time. I can Charleston pretty good now too. People just don’t choreograph dancing enough. I’ve started eating a porcupine now. I no longer feel comfortable just hitting a dance floor blind. Sure I can try shimmying or I can shake my hands and step back and forth like a lazy version of the hockey pokey. But not now, now I can swing dance. But I only have 40 seconds worth of routine. The pressure is on.
For every kid in the park there are at least 20 more sitting at home on there arses watching the biggest loser while eating pizza. For every old person there dancing it up with a grey haired honey there’s 20 more calling their daughter and moaning about the price of margarine. There’s so much on in Melbourne. There’s festivals and performances going on just about every day. How do you get more losers to utilise it? I don’t know, all I know is that when I turn 80 I’ll be pasting on the Vaseline hair tonic, shining my two tone shoes. Strapping on suspenders and hitting the park looking for hot widows.
An amusing anecdote, my brother works in my old call centre currently and he had some old guy who thought he was funny put him on hold for ten minutes then ask ‘Do you have a lead bar or a long weight?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you sure you didn’t just have one?’ I don’t really get it myself but the guy next to my brother said that for a while there was an epidemic of old people blowing whistles down the phone as call centre headphones had no noise inhibitors, which is a bastardly thing to do, hurt someone’s ears just because they are trying to earn $16 an hour so they qualify for youth allowance. Anyway this guy took down the old bastards number and started calling him at 3 am in the morning and threatening to kill him. Apparantly the old guy was terrified and couldn’t put two and two together. Yet another incentive to not adopt the victim mentality, you’ll end up being a victim by some bastard who’s much more of a smart arse than you are. And handle annoying people politely or they tend to become more so.

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