Today (same day as the laptop girl road crossing) I saw a toothbrush packet on the footpath. Looked fresh.

So someone has bought this toothbrush, I imagine in the convenience store that was just there, and needed to use it immediately. This is also the sort of person that has no way to retain the packaging for a toothbrush to put in a central-rubbish-collection-receptacle for collection by a designated-rubbish-collector.

So I imagine they were naked… Oh my god, I just worked it out literally half way through typing that. Remember the scene from Pulp Fiction, is there a guy with a gimp mask being held somewhere and he escapes and runs down the street. That’s it! This guy’s just escaped a sex dungeon where he was the main course, and the first thing on his mind (and rightly so, I shall say) is washing the naughty out of his mouth.

I forgive his littering. And I hope I didn’t just misquote Pulp Fiction. Lucky I have no readership.

Today, I saw a car slow down so that it didn’t hit a girl crossing the road. She wasn’t paying attention because she was looking down at her laptop screen. Laptop open, balanced on her left hand eyes glued on a, I don’t know, something that can’t be read on a phone, walking across the street. I share the planet with these people. You and I, dear reader, we share the planet with these people.

I got my doors put back on.

I’ve just won Beat The Buzzer again. It’s a game I play when the fire alarm goes off in my building and I don’t ‘evacuate now’ as the man directs (despite the ’emergency emergency’ that the man announces).

This time I got a total of 720 points. That’s a base 500 for not doing as I’m told. Plus 100 for each fire truck that arrived with sirens on, plus 1 per minute that the alarm was going (20). I got minus ten for going out on the balcony and smelling for smoke. I would also like to get 1 point for every sucker downstairs that heeded the warnings but when I peeked over the railing of the balcony there were a bunch of people looking up. Obviously jealous that I had the kahones to not bother walking down nine flights of stairs at midnight.

I have slipped a note under the building manager’s door.

Dear Building Manager. I am the dude in apartment 819. I will not be leaving my unit the next time the fire alarm goes of. If there is a real fire, please come up and get me, or my death will be upon your hands.

Love, Dirk.

I made it through the honey ordeal. I bought more honey. Contemplated what I’ve done with my life, wondered if this was the same t-shirt I was wearing the last time I bought honey, and moved on. Now, on to lighter things.

I’ve had all doors removed from my house. I’ve kept the front one I should say, but the rest: gone. I’ve got nothing against doors, they serve an amazing array of purposes. But hinges … recently I’ve been thinking a lot about hinges and I don’t think I want them in my house. Open, closed, they don’t care. I don’t think I want to be a part of that whole scene.

My bathroom cabinet doors were reflective. That is to say, they had mirrors as a veneer, that is to say they were like all other bathroom cabinet doors. And now, without these, I have no idea what to look at when brushing my teeth. I don’t know what I used to look at, did I just stare into my own eyes? Surely if I did I could still picture what my eyes looked like (that’s what I miss the most with no doors). Was I carefully adjusting the angle of the toothbrush based on visual feedback of what was going on in the whole mouth area? I feel like I’m still just as good at brushing my teeth so I don’t think that’s what I looked at. I don’t know, and I don’t want to get the doors back just to find out.

Even turned up full, I need to keep stuff in the crisper at the bottom of the fridge if I want it to keep from going off.

Dear readers, the below post was (also) written while (I assume) drunk beyond memory. I don’t understand most of it.

If you are a police man, a law enforcement agent, or anyone involved in any way that may be deemed reasonably obviously the law enforcement industry, reading any further within this document will be considered an invasion of privacy and therefore illegal. Seriously, don’t fuck with that or this will be read out in court and you’ll be fucked. There’s precedent that I’ve forgotten, but that’s not the point. Stop reading.

I’ve been producing something. Fuck it’s good. I know the normal stuff, and thought, it’s all science, right? It’s just atoms, it can’t be that hard. And I’ll tell you, aspiring, non-law-enforcement-types: it is not that hard. Your first batch will be shit. Second and third will raise your eyebrows, and by the fourth, you’ll be assessing who is your friend and who isn’t, because you’ll want to spread the word and get your shit out there.

If you’re doing it for the money then you’re a dumb cunt; have a nice time in jail, my condolences to your bottom. But if you’re doing it for the love of the free market and/or your right to be better at stuff than that dipshit standing next to you, then spread your arms and soar, muthafukka! ‘Soar’ is a quote from the love of my life. I love it.

You know the thing I love most about the Germans is that they have a word for everything. Except “I’m out of spaghetti”.

Where the fuck is your word for that? Hmmm?

Wait, it’s a Rhodes Scholar? I always thought it was a Rogue Scholar. Like, for people that wouldn’t play by society’s rules and had a devil may care attitude but none the less valued a good education. Huh.

I live around the corner from a hospital. That hospital has a bus stop, and I like this bus stop. There’s always that chance that I’ll see someone crying in public. And it’s like double-bonus-points crying in public because if they’re at the bus stop, they’re leaving the hospital, which means they either left a really sick person on their own, or they left because a really sick person just died.

And they have to catch a bus home. Me? I’d splurge on a cab for any death-related trip. Or just drive. Imagine if you got on the bus for the death-trip home and that was the last trip on your ten-trip multipass. The machine that the card goes in would do a double beep. The little display would flash in red: there’s nothing left, it’s over.

It was a year ago, I was on top of the world walking down Miller street past a bus stop. There was a woman, maybe somewhere at the back end of her twenties, crying like a good sort.

I thought back to my first cat Tinker (you now know my password to absolutely everything) and the day she disappeared. It was the day after Christmas 1984, barely six months since Ghostbusters was released. She was a house cat and rarely went outside for more than 30 seconds at a time. Usually about the amount of time it took to sit down after letting her out. But on this day of boxing, she had been gone for a few hours and I began to worry. She’s just gone to the sales I told myself. She’ll be back any moment meowing proudly that she’s already bought some Christmas presents for next year.

But alas she never returned. For her, there was no Christmas next year. Maybe she made it to the sales, maybe she didn’t. We’ll never know.

The thought of Tinker had the desired effect, I was now standing at a bus stop on Miller street crying (like a good sort).

I sat down next to crying woman and sobbed it out. I heard her sniff – the sound of wrapping up a bout of crying. I turned to her and whimpered through tears, “are you OK?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled.

“Shit day, isn’t it?” And she did a little smile.

“Two months”, I mumbled. “Two months and I have no idea how to fill them.” She looked at me inquisitively so I offered more juice. “Cancer, final stages.” She opened her mouth like an idiot.

“The good news is I should be able to get around for the next few weeks or so, then it’s off to lie down in …” I paused for effect “… my death bed, I guess. But listen to me, what’s go you so down?”

“My boyfriend dumped me.” She said with nowhere near enough shame.

“Oh,” I said, and paused for about two DSBs. “woe …” I said, and paused for another 1.2 seconds. I’d stopped crying and my face was reanimating, “… is me. Oh, the sky is falling! Oh the FUCKING HUMANITY! My boyfriend dumped me and I will – absolute worst case – have to spend the next 50 years of my life alone!” I stood up to finish.

“What an awful 50 years that could potentially be!” I yelled, and walked away.

Five minutes well spent.