Supermarket Detective Agency

There I was, minding my own business in the local supermarket. I grabbed a trolley, you know, one of those miniature ones designed to carry baskets for lazy people who refuse to use basket handles… in any case I proceeded in my usual manner, making my way to household cleaners (before shelf food items and then finally fridge/freezer items… if you don’t do this you are weird, so there). I should mention that things were not going so well for me this day as I had accumulated quite a lot of common cold symptoms. To be more specific; groggy voice, coughing and sputtering, red droopy eyes and a snotty nose to top it all off (just keep that wonderful image of me in your mind for now).

Back to the story, I had already placed an item or two into my trolley before I decided to make a quick trolley-less dash into a crowded isle to pick up some soap. I legged it through the masses of smelly obese ladies buying beauty products to the soap section hauled a couple bars of Protex into my arms and legged it back through the ambulating wall of lard. When I emerged (unscathed) I was greeted by an empty space where my trolley once stood.

GONE!?

What…? Where could it…? WHO TOOK IT!?

It had only been a few seconds, a half minute at the most. The rational thing to do would be to go back to the trolley section fetch another one, reselect taken items and get over it. Alas, my mind was not of a rational state at the time and my thoughts followed this path instead:

“The Bastard! I don’t want to have to get another trolley! Why should I? I distinctly remember putting a green basket at the top and a black one at the bottom, I can find this trolley snatcher and get my vehicle back! They can’t have gone very far and they will only have gathered a few items (if any) in the interim.”

I scan my surrounding through red eyes (how about that one…) before:

“There! Old lady pushing identical trolley with few items at 3 o’clock!”

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even think twice before walking up to her and asking her to return my trolley. I tried to sound friendly but my voice let me down and I ended up growling out a statement punctuated falsely by involuntary coughing.

“So *cough-cough* You’re the *cough* lady who *sputter-cough* took my *swallow phlegm* trolley!” I said, trying to smile after her eyes greeted me with some confusion and a bit of fear I guess.

“No.” says the old lady softly “I got mine from the front, but you can take one of my baskets. I’m checking out now”

I coughed my way though an apology before humbly (or at least as humble as a deranged coughing, snotty, psycho with a trolley fetish can possibly appear) accepting the offer and taking an unused basket from her. As I walked away, thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed, I spotted ANOTHER trolley that looked exactly like mine. Like an eagle fixing its gaze on potential prey from a distance, I locked onto to the trolleys driver (pusher?). An unattractive pudgy middle aged woman seemed a likely suspect for trolley theft as dastardly as had befallen me, especially so as she was wearing clothes that were at least 2-3 sizes too small for her (YUCK!). Only someone too lazy to carefully select proper clothes sizes so they can be comfortable would stoop so low as to steal someone else’s trolley to save a few measly seconds at the trolley stand!

I homed in on her and said “Hey! You took my *cough-cough* trolley, I was using that.” I was so sure! She looked at me, shook her head and said “No, I got this from the front”. Deflated, I apologized and decided to give up.

So, so sure… she MUST have been lying.

Bad case of mistaken identity

I hate it when people get offended for no reason (I can't seem to get this image to show properly. Click to enlarge)

Oh my God she is stupider than I ever imagined!

I saw something strange on Google news this morning, let me share.

Below is a picture of some meat. Okay the meat is sort of arranged in a manner that represents an item of clothing. A form of protest perhaps? Animal rights groups bringing awareness to the plight of animal lives we, as humans, so shamelessly exploit.

Think again, this item of ‘clothing’ belongs to someone. It isn’t a museum or exhibition piece either. This person actually wore the meat. I’ll give you one guess...

Yup you guessed it. Lady GAGA!!!

How the hell can she wear something like THAT (look at the hat and boots… *sigh*) and STILL walk around looking smug with that ‘I’m so original and popular’ look on her face!? She defended the meat dress by saying "If we don't stand up for what we believe in, if we don't fight for our rights, pretty soon we're going to have as many rights as the meat on our bones" (I interpret that as “I’m fighting for my right to be a crazy woman, if sane people have rights so should us crazy lot. VIVA CRAZY VIVA, PHANSI SANITY PHANSI!”). Remember, this is the same woman that said she refused to have sex because her creative juices would be sucked out of her vagina!

Gaga went on to saying something along the lines of “It’s the same as wearing leather…” (and I say “Listen Gaga, it just isn’t… you’re a complete nutter”)

Most embarrassing moments ever part one: The nose that kept running

We all go through with these in our lives, the brief embarrassing moments experienced wherein an individual just wished that it could shrivel up into nothingness out of sheer society witnessed stupidity. I was in two thoughts about blogging about my most embarrassing moments ever. After some reflection, I came to the deduction that these happened sufficiently long ago enough for me to write about them without feeling like a complete artard. I’m not that same guy any more (or at least I hope I’m not…).

The first ever moment of embarrassment I can recall clearly in my life occurred way back when I was still in primary school (grade 3 or 4 or around the period of 1993-1994). Us Muslim kids had double school, we attended regular classes in the mornings and then went off to madressa (private Islamic education) in the afternoons. Our madressa group was not huge, 20-30 kids in all, and as a result we all worked in the same room under one or two teachers regardless of grade.

Let me get back to my story… On this particular day once upon a time, I was just coming over with the flu. Not keen to hear excuses, my parents sent me of to madressa armed with a solitary handkerchief. I knew that I had to endure the 2 hour class with a runny nose and hoped all would be well. Alas, the dripping nares ceased to desist, just halfway into our class and my handkerchief was soaked with… well you know… and I still had another HOUR to go!!!

What was I going to do!? If I had a long sleeved jersey, I could always use the sleeves and if I wasn’t so scared of the teacher I could have just gone to the bathroom and taken a bunch of loo paper to do the job instead. I didn’t do any of those things, my solution at the time was probably the best compromise I could come up with under the circumstances. I decided to twist the opposite corners of my handkerchief into nose plugs and stuff each into an offending nostril to hold back the downpour of snot.

GENUIS!

No…not quite… I quickly found out that my solution was NOT a long term one. My nose quickly filled with snot and the stuff was now dribbling back down my throat and making it really difficult to breath. I had to do something! ‘Just go and ask permission to go to the toilet Ebrahim!’ I kept telling myself but I just couldn’t bear walking up in front of the class with my makeshift nose plugs.

I HAD TO DO SOMETHING!!!

What happened next was something I had done out of desperation, despair and instinct (…all mixed together in puke coloured bowl). I pulled out the nose plugs, stuck them in my mouth and stucked them dry before quickly putting them back into my nose to absorb more of the liquidy ooze. By repeating the process over and over again I found out that I could keep up with the downpour and even use my nose to breath whilst sucking the plugs dry. AWESOME!

I carried on with my lesson as per usual after that, the whole nose siphon process became instinctual and all was well. Or so I thought till I heard some giggling coming from the popular girls seated in the front corner of the classroom. I glanced up from my work to see that they were looking in my direction. Not fazed at all, I turned around thinking that the source of their amusement came from behind me… and sure enough, there was a kid passed out and sleeping on his desk back there. I too found this amusing and started giggling at the sleeping kid all the while turning to look at him before glancing back at the popular girls sharing in their fun. The doodle below illustrates the situation quite nicely I think…

Their little giggles had now turned onto what looked liked lung popping efforts to contain massive outbursts of laughter. The mood was quite contagious and I too ended up in this state (unaware that throughout the ordeal I was continually siphoning out my nose with a makeshift nose-plug-snot sponge…). A little while later the sleeping kid woke up and moved away. Sensing that this was the end of our much enjoyed amusement, I calmed myself down and continued my work.

‘Wait a second’ I thought why haven’t the popular girls stopped laughing?

Bing! (a light went on).

It was ME!!! AAARGH!!!! I clenched my eyelids as tightly as I could before curling over onto my desk and hiding my face in my arms. What an idiot I must have looked laughing; sharing and making eye contact with the popular girls in the joke that I was the subject of…

…Sigh…