Traffic here at this blog has gone through the roof recently.

Is it because I write a steady stream of hilarious-and-simultaneously-thought-provoking posts? A brand of unique comedy hitherto unseen on the internet? Is it because jasperschultz.com is a veritable cornucopia of entertainment?

No, no it isn’t.

It’s because you are all dying to know what the hell Katy Perry means when she threatens to “melt your popsicle”. And, according to Google, this site holds the answer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGGObv6GNME

Now, while I am flattered at the attention, and have already given myself the title Minister for Sustainable Popsicles (I’m here if you need me, Julia), I have to admit that I:

a) don’t really have the definitive answer, and
b) am surprised anyone expected to gain understanding from a Katy Perry lyric?

I mean, there’s no denying that the woman can maneouvre that nubile young body through some fairly catchy titties—I mean ditties—but has anyone ever come away from one of her songs feeling philosophical about the underlying message? I don’t really think that Katy Brand nee Perry nee Hudson actually believes in layers at all. Not in her hair, not in her outfits, not in her songs, and not in her husband.  

I think that maybe the most we can discover, when dissecting the lyrical frog that is ‘California Gurls’, is the blatant abuse of a mixed metaphor.

I mean, we can all agree that the “popsicle” in question is a man’s penis, right? RIGHT? (Please don’t tell me I’m the only person who jumped to that conclusion; that would say a lot more about me than it does about our mate Kazza.) If a popsicle is indeed meant to be as phallic as it sounds; what, exactly, does it mean to “melt” it? Is there some horrible genetic mutilation fetish at play? I’m suddenly not as keen to bop my head to this song if I’m to believe that K.Per secretly hopes that my junk will liquefy into a useless pool, like that time I put my G.I. Joe in the microwave (don’t worry, it was only Windmill, and he’s useless without his Skystorm X-Wing Chopper).

On further thought, I’m pretty sure Katy Perry isn’t hoping to melt our actual popsicles, Raiders of the Lost Ark style. I am pretty sure it’s just a schoolyard-level joke pertaining to the word “sticky’.

Of course, there’s always the alternative -- that she meant actual popsicles. And she was describing the sun-kissed skin of her Californian sistren as being actually hot enough to actually melt them. But if that’s the case, then what is “sun-kissed skin” a metaphor for? Because if she meant actual skin as well, then doesn’t that mean the girls are terribly unwell? Should they not be taken to an emergency room? I remember the last time I had a fever I described my skin as being “hot enough to fry an egg”, but it didn’t make me sound, look, or feel the least bit sexy, and I certainly was in no bloody mood to be singing about it.

Then again, it would go a long way to describing the vivid colours and borderline hysterical concepts in the video for ‘California Gurls’. Fever dream, perhaps?

Remember when Tori Amos bucked the trend of female musicians in the early 90s by playing vaguely abstract songs on her piano instead of tit-reliant dancepop?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpLCFph9iv4

That was awesome. Whimsical and awesome. She burst onto the alternative scene and captured the hearts of a lot of disenfranchised people.

Remember when Tori Amos started gussying herself up like Janice from Electric Mayhem, invented five alter egos and went on a ridiculous and ill-informed tirade against an undeserving Britney Spears?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8HfH2D9JMI

(Oh shut UP, Janice.) That was not alternative. It was pretentious, contrived and ignorant.

Remember when Christina Aguilera bucked the trend by spanking her inner moppet like no one had spanked it before? She put eleven wigs on at once, covered her hoo-hoo with a leather eyepatch, emptied a vacuum cleaner bag on herself and got Dirrty?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BmCDoJbrC4

That, despite being a raging chart topper, a comeback of sorts, and unrelenting source of pop culture fodder for years to come, was technically alternative.

Remember when Christina Aguilera started stalking Lady Gaga, collecting all the bits of costume that dropped off her to make into her own Lady Gaga disguise, which she then wore constantly as she clomped all over the world trying to remind everyone that she was here first?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrmJl1l_iaA

It was/is not alternative. It is tired and counterproductive. (It is also a little bit sad. And yo, Xtina, we’ve ALL seen Madonna’s Human Nature video. Put the riding crop away.)

So, why the sudden breakdown of what does and does not constitute “alternative”? Because it has been brought to my attention that the status quo eschewing pescetarian fringe enthusiast of deceptively plain nomenclature—otherwise known as Amanda Palmer—is currently skittering about wildly in the divide between alternative art and blithe caterwauling for attention.

How? By releasing an EP of Radiohead covers. Performed on the ukulele. A “magical” ukulele. For 84 cents.

(The EP is 84 cents, not the magic ukulele.)

How delightfully whimsical and not at all contrived! That’s so alternative I can’t even fathom it with my tiny mind! Wow. That Amanda Palmer sure is alternative. She’s so alternative she makes Meshell Ndegeocello look like Raven Symone.

You know what? Fuck Amanda Palmer. Fuck Radiohead covers. Fuck magical ukuleles and fuck her 84 cents. It is this level of affected kookiness that gives all alternative artists a bad name.

If, on the golf course of artistry, you occupy a position that’s more rough than fairway (or say, in Prince’s case, from rough to fairway back to rough to up a motherfucking tree), then that’s totally cool. I love that there are artists of all kinds (visual, musical, film..ical) doing their thing. Not because it’ll explode into the collective consciousness, but just because they love it.

But what I can’t stand is people taking mulligans: kicking their golf balls to places other than where they naturally fall, in an effort to avoid being par*.

I’m actually embarrassed for Amanda Palmer. This is so bad, somewhere in the world right now James Blunt is going “Gosh, Mands, isn’t that a bit pretentious?”. James Blunt thinks Amanda Palmer is pretentious*. That’s bad. And I don’t know when Amanda Palmer was alternative, but I know she was -- probably even still is. She has a substantial legion of fans, and has many different musical incarnations. But playing Radiohead covers on a “magical” ukulele for 84 cents (“but, oh, more if you feel like it, to support my struggling artist soul?”) is forced and pretentious and hateful.

Not buying this album is not enough. I want to do more to protest against this. So not only am I not going to pay 84 cents to hear Radiohead savaged on a ukulele; I am going to pay my real ukulele playing friend a whole dollar to play whatever the fuck she wants.

*Not actually verified. But possible.

**I honestly had no idea, when I started that golf metaphor, that I’d get so much mileage out of it. I thought it was a hole in one, tops -- but there were so many links! Sure, it got a bit buggy towards the end there, but that kind of humour suits me to a tee. Don’t you agree(n)? Also: Something something flag divot eagle. There, I’m done now.

You know what, people? Calm down. Just take a deep, soothing breath and caaaaaaaalm down. If everyone keeps tottering about the place as tightly wound as they are right now, we’re all going to do ourselves a damage.

Every day we are forced to face unnecessary rudeness from people. And we, in turn, are unnecessarily rude to others. It’s time to put a stop to it.

You see that shop assistant you just barked at because you couldn’t find the thing you were looking for? He didn’t hide it to spite you. He didn’t see you coming, whisper to his buddies “ZOMG watch this, it’ll be hilarious-cakes!” and hide all the can openers in the menswear section just to mess with your head. So why act like he did?

The kid at Red Rooster who forgot to put the sweet & sour sauce in the bag with your Cheesy Nuggets isn’t secretly hoping that you’ll choke to death on insufficiently moistened reconstituted chicken meat substitute. And you know this. So why hiss at them like they’ve personally tried to murder you?

And if you call me at work to ask why you haven’t received an email in some time (which, incidentally, don’t actually come from me), and I discover that the person we had listed as your business contact no longer works there, what is to be achieved by continuing to snarl at me? Is it really my fault for failing to anticipate the departure of your colleague? And on what plane of existence does this constitute a personal affront to you? Why are you speaking to me like I just punched your kitten in the face?

It’s a widely accepted fact that people who work in customer service hate customers. And why? Because customers are, by and large, terrible people: bad mannered, impatient, solipsistic jagweeds completely devoid of the ability to think reasonably or read signs. This defies logic, because 100% of people who work in customer service are also themselves customers; and 99% of people who are customers have, at one point or another, worked in customer service. We know what it’s like from both sides. So why are we so badly behaved?

Because it’s an easy outlet for our frustrations. Finding people who are compelled, by the most basic tenet of their employment, to be nice to you no matter what; and acting like Mel Gibson*. You get to feel all powerful, and they are powerless to stop you.

And you know who else tried to make themselves feel better and more powerful by attacking the innocent and defenceless? People who hunt deer for sport. Do you really want to be like the men who shot Bambi’s mother?

In the effort to stop us from behaving like Disney villains, I am encouraging us all to stop being jerks to those who serve us. Stop using them as a punching bag for our own frustrations. If the restaurant is out of the thing you want, it’s probably not the fault of the waiter currently about to face your wrath, so just pick something else. The telemarketer who calls you at dinner time isn’t on a personal mission to ruin your day, they’re just doing their job (and are probably already pretty miserable themselves, because it’s a terrible job a lot of people resort to just to make ends meet**), so spare the abuse and just hang up.

And because there are a lot of actual bad people who enjoy behaving like jagweeds to  customer service employees, I am providing a weapon to the Nametag Brigade to use as a deterrent:

Jasper’s Jagweed Jab

If a customer is behaving reprehensibly for no good reason, take the following steps:

Step One: Stick your finger up their nose. Don’t make a big show of it, just extend a digit really quickly and stick it right up a nostril. If you’re quick enough, you can wiggle it around a bit before putting your hand back by your side.
Step Two: When they react, deny doing it. Sticking a finger up someone’s nose is such an unexpected action that the plausible deniability is inherent. In fact, it so easily denied that it leads to:
Step Three: Act appalled and hurt at such a terrible accusation, and tell them if they are going to openly lie about a physical attack, you have no choice but to ask them to leave the store. Tell them you’re going to call your security, and walk away on the verge of tears. But before you go…
Step Four: Stick another finger up the other nostril.

Once enough customer service practitioners know about the J.J.J., and the threat of having your proboscis violated is ever-present, people will be more careful about wildly attacking those in a position of servitude.

OR: People could just stop being rude to those who don’t actually deserve it. The world will become a better place, and we won’t have to deal with other people’s snot on our fingers.

*Yeah, I went there. What you call a cheap shot I call searingly topical social commentary! I got your back, Botswana. (Noxeema? Sakata? What’s her name again***?)
**I speak from personal experience, here.
***Now THAT’S a cheap shot.

This morning I decided I would walk to work, under the heading “cursory health conscious behaviour”. Normally I couldn’t give rat’s date about exercise, and simply maintain my ability to wear all my current clothes by (occasionally) regulating what I eat. However, working in Fitzroy puts me in close proximity to a dazzling array of food outlets; and when I’m not at work I spend a lot of time at the The House of Interchangeable Beards, where something delicious is baked approximately every eleven minutes (seriously, on a good day there are so many timers going ‘ding!’, heralding the arrival of some new delicious foodstuff, it’s like someone is playing Tubular Bells up in there). As a result, I find myself consuming vast quantities of food at all times; and exercise is becoming increasingly important in my quest to continue fitting through regulation sized doorways.

So, walking to work. It’s functional, it’s good for my fuel tank (and more importantly, the environment), and I get twice the amount of exercise for the willpower required (because I only need the impetus to walk to work: once I’m at work with no car I’m compelled to walk home again, whether I want to or not).

The problem is, that small amount of willpower is still hard to come by. If I am struck by the desire to walk to work, I have to act quickly; otherwise I’ll talk myself out of it again. It means getting my walking gear on, packing suitable work clothes to change into later, and getting out the door fast.

Possibly too fast.

I realised this morning when I got to work that I should have paid slightly more attention to what I packed to change into. EVERYTHING is green, or a shade thereof. I look like I just stumbled out of the crowd at a school sports carnival. I wouldn’t look out of place dancing behind Feist, or singing about my troubles in a swamp.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIOiwg2iHio

As a result, I have been subjected to varying degrees of ridicule. Normally I would be crushed and hurt and embarrassed, but it actually highlighted what a clever group of people I hang out with. Here is a selection:

From the person in the café where I get my coffee: You look good in green. It makes you look healthy. It must be all that photosynthesis?

From one of our voiceover artists: How terribly coordinated. It’s almost preppy. You look like you’d be friends with Emily Gilmore.

From a coworker: Oh, come on. Even The Wiggles wore black pants.

And so on. What not a single person mentioned, however, was that the green looked slimming on me. I guess that means it didn’t. As a result, I am going to continue walking to work, and continue running the gauntlet to get out of my house before the impetus to walk to work wears off, and may continue spending the day dressed like some kind of sociological experiment. Because quite frankly, I don’t need to waste my time or my energy on something as superficial as whether or not all my clothes are the same colour.

What I do need to waste my time and energy on, however, is figuring out how the hell I came to be in the possession of a pair of green pants.

I rarely try to get educational in this blog because…well firstly,  yawn, but also to be honest, I’ve never had anything to teach before.

But I do now. I want to teach you about context. Specifically, I want to show you how even the slightest shift in context can cause massive follow on effects to the world at large.

To assist me in this educational endeavour, I have YouTube. Let us begin.

First, watch this film clip. It is for Kylie Minogue’s most recent single, ‘All The Lovers’. The song is fairly average, but the film clip is quite pretty:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR06xs-Iqkk

Aw, wasn’t that nice? Bodies entwined, embracing each other, moving as one at the behest of their omniscient love queen, Kylie. The clip is both sexually charged and innocent. It’s as if Anne Geddes hosted an orgy. In short? It’s beautiful.

Now watch this trailer for the much talked about horror film, The Human Centipede:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX8fKLjC__c

I know, right? Apparently the film itself is quite lamesauce, but that trailer is still disgusting.

Okay, having just watched that trailer: watch the “beautiful” Kylie Minogue film clip again. I’ll wait here for you.

WHAT THE HELL IS KYLIE MINOGUE SUPPOSED TO BE THE HEAD OF?

And hands up everyone who, at some point during that second viewing, couldn’t help but visualise what would happen when she had to do a poo?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you THE POWER OF CONTEXT.

What kind of a horrible world do we live in where being a carry-over champion on Wheel of Fortune means nothing?

That’s the reality I have to face as I start to accept the fact that I may never hear from the producers of the new SBS game show, Letters and Numbers, for which I auditioned almost three weeks ago.

How could they ignore me? I thought I was a shoo-in. I thought I had a pedigree. Have you ever appeared on Australian television before? the questionnaire cooed. Regardless of the outcome of the actual quiz part of the audition, that question was the great divider. That was the filter that separated the wheat (me) from the chaff (the unwashed peasants who had not had the good fortune to grace the tube before). Have you ever appeared on Australian television before? The subtext was as plain as day: Are you one of us? And I am. Aren’t I?

In 2006, I appeared as a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. I had a shaved head, an unironed shirt and someone else’s shoes (borrowed from an upcoming contestant, as my sneakers were deemed “unsuitable”), but I was a contestant nonetheless. I bantered with Larry Emdur; I flirted awkwardly with Laura Csortan.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

I was shot in the foot early on with a Bankrupt. I used my Free Spin. I got an N for Nelly, I bought a vowel, I solved it thanks Larry. I earned my stripes, dammit!

And what does this mean to the SBS people? Nothing.

I was the model contestant, too. I followed the producer’s instructions to the letter. When she said don’t clap up high because the sound will distort your lapel microphone, I clapped down low. I looked like a seal, but I did as I was told.

When she said act more excited, because if this doesn’t make entertaining television we won’t air the episode and you won’t get your prizes, I acted more excited. I looked like I was auditioning for the Wiggles, but I did as I was told.

When she said make sure you spin the wheel properly, it has to make one full revolution or it doesn’t count, I put my back into it and spun that thing off its freaking axis. I got so into it I nearly lost my balance and went over the railing. I could have been the first person to ever die on the set of Wheel of Fortune—impaled by Top Dollar—but I did as I was told.

And what does this mean to the SBS people? Nothing.

Oh sure, there are some who might say that it was the lacklustre performance on my quiz that sealed my fate. And yes, for one of the mathematical problems all I wrote in the answer box was “oh no!”; but that can’t be it, surely. There’s got to be more to it than that. No, I sense something bigger is afoot. Some kind of larger mystery. A mystery that may never be solved.

At least, I can’t solve it. And I know about solving things, I was on Wheel of Fortune, you know.

To celebrate my fancy new site design (do you like? The Baron did it all for me. Bright colours, giant letters – it appeals to my inner child and my inner narcissist!), I’m starting a new regular feature for this blog. It’s called “Just Stop”, and in it I will address important problems facing our society. I will address the source of these problems and tell them to just stop.

I’ll show you what I mean right now, with our very first installment of “Just Stop”:

JUST STOP, MAROON 5

Yes, Adam Levine, your debut album (Songs About Jane) was very good. It was so good you got to ride the wave of its success for three long years. Then came your second album, which proved—according to music journalists—that you weren’t just a one trick pony. But really, a two trick pony is only one whole trick better than a one trick pony. And when those two tricks are singing really high and looking sexy despite having a tiny face on the end of a horse-sized head, the magic can’t last forever.

Now it’s 2010, and you’re back, with a new smash-hit single, ‘Misery’. Except it’s exactly like ‘Makes Me Wonder’, only with slightly different lyrics. Yes, I know that Nickelback’s songs all sound exactly the same too, but if Nickelback jumped off a cliff, would you?

Sorry, now the image of Nickelback jumping off a cliff is in my head, I’m going to need a moment. Ah, lovely.

And I’m back. So, Adam: ‘Misery’. What an apt title. Did you have to suffer much to get your voice to go that high? You sound even more like Beaker than usual. There does come a point where you’re not singing so much as communicating with dolphins. And you know what the dolphins are saying in return? They are saying “ow, my freaking earholes! Why is the beady-eyed human yelling at us?”

If you aren’t going to do anything new, Maroon 5, you need to stop.

Take Green Day and Train with you.

I’ve suddenly become very suspicious of the building in which I work.

It is a building in which several different companies reside, and I’m convinced that there is a memo that goes out to all the companies, regardless of their size, structure or function, every time I go to the toilet.

I imagine it looks something like this:

ATTENTION: ALL LEASEHOLDERS AT [BUILDING]
PRIORITY: URGENT

IT HAS COME TO OUR ATTENTION THAT JASPER SCHULTZ, FULL TIME EMPLOYEE OF [WORKPLACE], HAS JUST ENTERED THE PUBLIC RESTROOM LOCATED ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF OUR BUILDING.

SOURCES REVEAL THAT THIS IS NOT MERELY A BRIEF SOJOURN TO THE URINAL, BUT RATHER A MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT CUBICLE VISIT.

GIVEN JASPER’S EXTREME DISCOMFORT WITH VISITING PUBLIC RESTROOMS UNDER EVEN THE BEST OF CIRCUMSTANCES, IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT ALL AVAILABLE PERSONS IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THEIR DESKS AND FAFF ABOUT IN THE GENERAL BATHROOM AREA.

LOCATED WITHIN THE MEN’S BATHROOM, ADDITIONAL TO THE CUBICLE JASPER IS CURRENTLY OCCUPYING, IS A SECOND CUBICLE, A URINAL STAND, A WASHBASIN AND HOT AIR DRYER. THEREFORE, THERE SHOULD BE NO LESS THAN FOUR OTHER PERSONS OCCUPYING THE BATHROOM FOR THE DURATION OF JASPER’S ABLUTION.

GIVEN YOUR CONTINUED COOPERATION IN THIS ENDEAVOUR, WE PLAN TO CAUSE MR SCHULTZ TO HAVE A COMPLETE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN WITHIN WEEKS.

REGARDS,
SOME KIND OF SINISTER HIGHER PRESENCE

This is the only reason I can think of why, on the rare occasion (like, very rare, because I try to avoid this wherever possible) that I have to make a…er…sitting visit to the bathroom, a veritable assemblage of persons bust into what is essentially my personal space. Once there, they seem to just mill about with no direct purpose, save for causing all my sphincters to slam shut. So I just sit there, waiting. Waiting for everyone to leave, to get away from me, or to at least make some damn noise so that I can shift about in my seat because my right cheek is about to go numb.

The repercussions of this choreographed aggravation of my public pooping phobia goes beyond merely have a numb backside and an airlocked alimentary canal. The longer the bathroom invaders shilly shally about, the longer I have to wait before I can safely “go”. The longer I have to wait, the longer it is before I can return to my desk. The longer I spend away from my desk, the weirder my co-workers think I am. The weirder my coworkers think I am, the more nervous about being at work I get. The more nervous I am at work, the more frantically my digestive system operates.

And the cycle continues.

As if it isn’t hard enough to go to the bathroom. The continued internet presence of The Human Centipede has already given me BM related nightmares. Now I have to contend with my toilet visits being flashmobbed?

I beg you, O Sinister Higher Presence, spare me from this torture. Cease and desist your impromptu pooping interventions, before I become a broken, quivering shell of a man.

Well, not so much a “shell”, I guess. Shells are empty. If those bastards keep interrupting me, I will NEVER be empty.

I am never sure what to make of Katy Perry. One minute I think she’s just awful. The next minute? Cute as a button. One song I’ll hate, and one song I can’t help but bounce along to. Sometimes it’s actually the same song. She says stuff as a judge on American Idol and I get all excited and fall in love with her. She says stuff on Twitter and I’m all “SHUT UP PERRY”. Also, she looks like Zooey Deschanel, but she’s engaged to Russell Brand. She is an infuriating ball of contradictions, moulded into this little pixie shape, with big round things sticking out the front of her. (What? I mean her eyeballs, filthy. They’re humungous! She looks like an anime version of herself! It’s kind of cute!)

This dichotomy I feel is not being assisted in the slightest by her brand new single, California Gurls. I mean, for a start, it is spelled incorrectly, which makes me angry. Also, it makes me think of David Lee Roth, which makes me sad.

I think, on the whole, I don’t like this song. I don’t exactly hate it*, but I don’t particularly enjoy it either. So, my final ruling on California Gurls? Meh.

Then I saw the film clip.

No, don’t skip past. You have to click through to watch it. This is more important than anything else you’ve got on today:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwE-SLnLkqY

I know, right? Look, let’s just get this out of the way, right off the bat:

KATY PERRY DESTROYS A SNOOP DOGG HELMED GUMMY BEAR ARMY BY FIRING WHIPPED CREAM FROM HER BAZOOMS.

Now: is that sentence appalling, or is it tremendous? Is it a tragic indictment of pop music/celebrity/feminism/some other thing in this day and age, or is it the most awesome assembly of words ever provided by the English language? I am seriously at a loss.

I mean sure, she’s wearing that hideous assortment of wigs, but she’s also wearing a cupcake bra! Sure, Snoop looks a bit bored in places, but she rescues her back up dancers from their confectionary prisons! Sure, she stops to lick frosting off a twig like she’s auditioning for bad porn, but SHE DESTROYS A SNOOP DOGG HELMED GUMMY BEAR ARMY BY FIRING WHIPPED CREAM FROM HER BAZOOMS.

The dichotomy continues. Like the Infinite Improbability Drive, Katy Perry somehow manages to exist at every single point on my love/hate scale simultaneously. She’s terrible, she’s wonderful, she’s hideous, she’s cute, she’s reprehensible, she’s adorable.

And despite the fact that the whole thing appears to take place in some kind of vajazzled Candyland bizarro world in which Snoop Dogg is God (Snoop Godd?) and desserts are undergarments, she still doesn’t look like she’s trying as hard as Lady Gaga. Or Christina Aguilera. Or Rihanna.

Also: KATY PERRY DESTROYS A SNOOP DOGG HELMED GUMMY BEAR ARMY BY FIRING WHIPPED CREAM FROM HER BAZOOMS.

That woman, she confounds us all. She’s like a toddler beauty pageant. She may be terrible, she may represent everything you hate, but as long as she keeps taking everything that’s cute and adorable and childlike and slutting all over it, you won’t be able to take your eyes off her.

Or her dairy cannons.

*My three most hated songs? Toca’s Miracle, Khe Sanh and On a Night Like This, in that order - this explains why I also hate indoor soccer, mullets and Rutger Hauer, in that order.

Just now, not eight minutes ago, I spilled coffee on myself. (Normally, when stories like this are told, the time frame is fluid: the other day, last week, lately; but I am being 100% time accurate. This actually just happened. It’s almost like live-blogging, except not at all interesting.)

Usually whenever I spill something on myself—and it happens with alarming regularity—my response is to throw my hands in the air in disgust at my own filth, start scrambling in my immediate vicinity for some soda water, realise that there is in fact very little chance of me finding any soda water in my office/bedroom/car, and anyway is it even soda water or is it tonic water or wait I know it’s bi-carb soda and vinegar no that’s a science experiment volcano oh no the stain is starting to dry maybe I should just spray stain remover on it there’s a bottle in the laundry no wait that’s Febreze I remember last time I did that my shirt smelled like Angela Lansbury’s handbag for a month oh this is ALL JUST TOO HARD. Then I just give up and pretend it isn’t there.

A week or so later, after the shirt has been through a laundry cycle and ended up back in my wardrobe, I’ll go to put it on, realise it has a stain all over the front of it, throw my hands in the air in disgust at my own filth a second time and dismiss the shirt to the bottom of the wardrobe where it will never be seen again. I then vow to go out immediately and buy nineteen bottles of soda water to strategically place about my person* so that next time I’ll be prepared.

This obviously never happens.

Today, however—ten minutes ago, in fact—I decided that things would be different this time. I am wearing a shirt I particularly like and I refused to let it go the way of so many others. I got up out of my desk and sprinted to the bathroom.

Well, I sprinted halfway to the bathroom. Then I smacked my leg into a table which kind of hurt, so I hobbled the rest of the way. It’s not like the table was in my path, so I’m not sure what happened. Clearly my body forgot it was running and decided it wanted to be in a Conga line instead. Step, step, step, kick to the side! This is a strong indicator that I need to exercise more often – one should never forget how to run.

I eventually got to the bathroom and, realising there was still no soda water within reach, I did the Sensible Man Thing and just started aggressively throwing water on myself. Splash splash splash. It was like a sexy bikini carwash scene in there, except with no cars or bikinis, and definitely not sexy. Well, maybe a little.

Soon the stain was gone, and in its place was a giant wet patch. And that’s where the hot air hand dryer comes in handy! Unfortunately, the hot air hand dryer is mounted on the wall at a height conducive to drying hands, so to get the wet part of my shirt (at around chest height) into the blast radius of hot air, I had to stand with my legs apart against the wall and, using the dryer itself for support, arch my back until my chest was angled under the vent.

Now this would normally be the time when approximately twenty-seven people all thunder into the bathroom at once to catch me humping a public facility, but the universe saw fit to give me a pass on this one, and I made it out of the bathroom with both my shirt and my dignity clean and dry.

I couldn’t believe my run of good luck until I got back to my desk and realised that my literal run in with the table on the way to my bathroom had broken the skin and my knee was bleeding.

So now there’s a stain on my pants.

*My sister does this with moisturiser. At all times she has some in her bag, in her bedroom, in her bathroom, when she was in school she had some in her desk – it might seem obsessive, but damn, if the woman doesn’t have the skin of a 22 year old**.
**Mind you, she is a 22 year old.