God, trams annoy me. Did you know that 90% of all deaths in the city of Melbourne are due to pedestrian side swipes by trams? Um, well, they’re not. But they may as well be.
If you don’t live in Melbourne and have never experienced the delightful experience that is tram-dodging, well, you really don’t know what you’re missing out on. (If you’re a Sydneysider and are thinking “Hey, there’s a tram in our city too”, well I say no, that’s not a real tram. It’s the furtherest I’ve ever seen from a tram. I believe that tram is there just so Sydney doesn’t have something Melbourne does have. It’s a fairly useless tram – don’t really go anywhere much! And yes, I know Adelaide has a tram too, but, uh, Adelaide doesn’t count. South Australia is a seperate country anyway, isn’t it? ……uh, where was I?)
Actually, some people have trouble visualising what a tram looks like. Well, try and mentally picture a bus morphing into a train. If you sort of stop the morph half way through, you’ve pretty much got a tram.
My theory on why trams can be so dangerous all comes down to it’s warning signal. Cars have horns. Trucks have airhorns. Trains have a trumpeting toot that scares you shitless if you’re standing closeby. And what do trams have? An incredibly unmenacing, friendly, happy bell that cheerily tones “Ding!” I really do think that sometimes the tram drivers wish they had a more powerful warning signal than the “Ding!” – as demonstrated by when cars cut them off and they furiously signal “Dingdingdingdingdingding!”
At my work (a uni), about 50% of the phone calls we get are requests for our prospectus. Today this guy rang up and goes “I’d like to get your prospectus for the year 2000,” except he said in a way that it sounded like part of the Silverchair song, Anthem For The Year 2000. So I had that song in my head for the rest of the day.
Isn’t it odd though, how you get a song in your head all day, mentally you change the lyrics without realising, then at the end of the day you listen to what’s been going round in your head all day and think what?! By the end of the day, the lyrics going around and around in my head had become “I’ll shave my pubic hair in the year 2000, shave it bald for you in the year 2000…” I worry myself sometimes.
My body is rebelling against me again. For no apparent reason my right pointer finger has gone partially numb – I have no feeling in it. This isn’t bullshit – it’s true, and it makes things so hard, you have no idea!! I’m getting a little prick to fix it tomorrow. (OK, I admit it. I’m playing with words. I’m getting an acupuncture treatment).
But why my right pointer finger? I need that part of my body. Why couldn’t it have been a more useless part of my body?