Human observation is a hobby of mine, absorbing a stranger’s behaviour, language and interaction with both their environment and with other strangers. I’m the creeper you see sitting in the café corner or on the pavement contently watching everyday happenings, nothing of significance, just commonalities that tie us all together as people. As much as we like to distance ourselves from these human errors, we can’t. We all point at our wrist when asking the time, and we all speed up immediately after we finally manage to pass someone just to elaborate how fast we could’ve been going if they weren’t slowing us down. We also forget each year the buy the blank Christmas cards, we buy the funny Santa cartoon ones which already have “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” printed inside so when it comes to filling them out we simply write To Suri, From Ron Hubbard.
LOL has gone from meaning “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”. I have to confess I avoid LOL, LMAO, and RFLMAO like the plague, I opt for HAHA to express my laughter. LOL can now and should be interpreted as “I don’t actually think that’s funny I’m just trying to get in your pants”, or “I’m politely replying to your abundance of texts, please stop harassing me, I’m not keen”. I knew the culture of text lingo had really hit rock bottom when my father sent me “Hi Half-pint. Weather is here, wish you were beautiful. ROFLMAO. LUL X”. When people are texting nonsensical abbreviations, I think it is time to forfeit the cool factor of LOL. I guess we can keep LOLcatz; you can’t really send those to someone and claim you’re not interested.
Hello, Hi, Hey, these all seem like similar words of acknowledgement. However, have you ever answered the phone with “Hi” or “Hey”? Who chose Hello to be the socially acclaimed telephone greeting? Seriously, next time your phone rings answer with a non-chalant drawn out “Hey”, your caller will get confused and repeat their name a few times making sure they have not just interrupted a conversation.
We take business cards from a restaurant or café that we like and store them in our wallet, as though we’re going to rummage through looking for them one day. If I like a place I go there again, I never look at their business card, its just peace of mind that I do in fact have it somewhere with my other hoard of cards.
Everyone is good, and it’s good that we’re all good. “How are you?” “I’m good thanks, and you?” “Oh, that’s good. Yes, I’m good too thanks.” “Oh, that’s good. So it’s settled, we’re both good, and it’s good that we’re both good.” When checkout operators ask me how I am, I enjoy truthfully describing my unbalanced emotions to them and exploring each detail of why my day was lousy and how the world is out to get me. They cannot walk away from my draining story, they have to sit and beep through my basket of nectarines. My favourites are the people who still say “Oh, that’s good”, at the end of my exaggerated disastrous woes of how unfortunate and deprived my life is. “Well, my house burnt down this morning, then I got hit by a bus, oh then I heard Key has been given an interview on the David Letterman Show to represent New Zealand and attempt to boost the tourism industry”. “Oh, that’s good. Would you like your frozens wrapped?”
What happened to goodie bags? My birthday isn’t until May but I’ve already planned my goodie bags. To hell with the broken yoyo, the fluro whistle and the dried up jet planes that are usually yellow or green because nobody likes those flavours; my goodie bags are going to be filled with much more needed everyday items such as spare buttons, an omelette maker, blu-tac, two for one coffee vouchers, rollerblades, and a lanyard from a concert that you didn’t go to.
Despite what people say I don’t think all babies are cute, I’m sorry. Don’t tell someone their baby is sweet and looks just like them. Tell them it has little ears and resembles Gary Coleman without the limp. This method works with puppies also, they’re not all cute. If you think a pet looks like road kill with a sparkly collar then I don’t see why you can’t tell the owner straight up. When you go to the ‘meet the parents’ dinner, don’t take a bottle of wine or a dessert, take something practical that you know every household could use more of like teaspoons or vacuum cleaner bags. That’ll get you a one way ticket to the family beach house for the summer.
I like all the songs on my iTunes until it’s on shuffle, then I tend to only play one from every dozen.