April 25, 2002 - 12:04 p.m.

today is ANZAC day in australia, which means no one in australia is working except simon because he has to work in a stupid video store. video stores never close. when i spent christmas here two years ago, simon had to work right after we ate christmas lunch. woo hoo.

it's also very wet and grey outside, and i haven't had my driving lessons yet, so i'd better get used to the fact that i'll be here all day. it's just as well because i've got work to do.

yesterday's interview was uneventful. i was overdressed, and i wore my more casual suit, the stretchy, modern one with lots of pockets. the office dress code at lush productions is, according to the guy who interviewed me, "t-shirt and jeans." i can definitely live with that.

i think the interview was boring because he was young and wasn't used to interviewing people. he kept scanning my resume over and over, which - trust me - is not going to get more interesting after the second read. he tried to finish the interview three times and then asked me another question, like, "have you used Macs?" i won't know anything until tuesday, at least.

simon subbed for a radio show on 3RRR last night, and i went along with him. he will be subbing for the next two weeks, as well, so if you want to hear him via internet, listen between 5am and 7am PST in the U.S. i know, why would you? it's far too early. but you can't say i didn't give you the information.

as we were leaving the radio station, we walked by a table of free goodies: gig fliers, club advertisements, etc. at the bottom left corner of the table, we saw a very strange thing: a stack of small, flat, white paper bags, like the kind you'd get if you bought a greeting card somewhere. each one was stapled four times at the top, and hand-printed on the front, in black letters, was Y O U

there were also three metallic green stripes above the letters, in either paint or nail polish. you could barely make out some handwriting inside the bag. maybe it was a fanzine? so i opened it, and there was one sheet of white photocopy paper inside, folded in four. this is what it said, word for word:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
19/4/02

Dear You,

I have just very nearly had a car accident. Which is not as exciting or bad as actually having a car accident I guess but I never have actually had one. I was on my way home from the supermarket, about to do a uey in the side street near my house, and I was waiting for a girl on a bike to go past, and she was taking her time, and as soon as she'd gone I started to turn and suddenly there was this car about 30cm away from mine, but luckily the driver was much more on the ball than me.

Just earlier today I was watching a show on tv about crash test dummies. It was very interesting. Apparently in the early days of testing the safety of cars the scientists used to use very large pigs instead of dummies becaue pigs most closely resembled [two crossed-out words] human flesh. This process was called Operation Barbequeue because after the testing the pigs were barbequeued and the scientists had a party.

I ran into Bondy at the supermarket. She was buying supplies for her housewarming tonight. More specifically, she was buying Cheezals, and this seemed weird because just before I saw her I passed a guy in the snacks aisle eating cheezals, which started some serious cheezal cravings. In the [crossed-out word] Biscuits aisle there was a supermodelesque girl [crossed-out word] talking to the guy stacking the shelf. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder pale pink top and skin tight white pants and see through plastic heels. The guy couldn't start stacking again until she'd walked all the way down the aisle and round the corner. I am never going to own any white pants.

I [crossed-out] am having sweet corn on the cob for dinner. How great is corn? I had my first cob 3 weeks ago, and am now addicted. I like it most with plenty of salt. When you were a kid did you ever eat sugar and salt at the same time just to see what it was like to mix opposites? I was having a conversation with Steve a couple of weeks ago about what the opposite of salt was. I suggested sugar or pepper but he said he thought it should be opposite in all aspects, like maybe Jupiter.