What next?

I’d like to start by thanking you for all the recent comments, especially on Intolerance of Intolerance. It got a much stronger reaction than I expected. I even received emails from people expressing their opinion and not wanting to seem too long-winded in public. Thanks again for taking the time to read it.

Also… my first shift at McDonalds is in 2 hours!

Now moving on to this blog entry.

Although I had no intention of using Intolerance of Intolerance for self-promotion, I don’t think there’s any other way of interpreting this particular post. Sure enough I’ll probably be cut down by a reliable friend who likes to make sure I stay grounded (you know who you are), but today I feel like tooting my own horn, so I will!

Having said that, if you’re expecting insight or social commentary along the lines of my last posts, I wouldn’t go getting your hopes up too high... :)

Dale – Pigeon Rescuer:

Long story short I was on my way to bring the recently emptied bins in (for which I have to go through the garage), but two pigeons became trapped in the netting that we have to keep birds out of the garage, from the inside. I don’t know how they got in in the first place, but boy did they tangle themselves up nice and good. Every time I approached them to try and untangle the netting they’d flap around vigorously and become even more entangled in the meshy black wire netting. Sadly, one of them appeared to have a broken leg, because it was twisted at such an extreme angle. I looked in its eyes and could see so much pain and fear, so I stumbled inside, got out the shotgun that dad keeps for emergencies, and… Nah I’m joking. :) I went inside to get some scissors, came back and did some careful and strategic snipping, leaving the pigeons both giant holes to escape through. But they didn’t move! I watched them for about two minutes but they remained where they were. For a second I thought they may have been dead, but then more logically (their eyes were still moving) thought that they were probably in shock. So I went inside and retrieved a water pistol from the laundry, filled it up, and with my impressive aim, let loose on the pigeons with an accurate and firm enough spray of cold water. It worked; they came to life almost instantly and flapped their way to freedom. I just hoped that the one with the broken leg would be okay.

Dale – MatchMaker

A few months ago I was at the Hawthorn to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I drank beer that night, and remember thinking “Why am I drinking beer? I hate beer...” Anyway, that’s not relevant! This friend had a lot of friends I didn’t know, and a lot who didn’t know each other, as there were some from his uni, some from his work, some from his school, etc etc. I took a liking to one of his uni friends – he bought me a beer, which was a nice gesture considering he didn’t know me at all, and wasn’t to know that I hate the stuff (and now I remember why I was drinking beer!) – and we made a pretty good team at pool. Some could say we dominated the table. Well, he dominated the table and I was handy every now and then. Anyway-who-how, that’s not really relevant either. It was when he told me that he liked the look of one our friend’s female friends from work that this story begins.

I didn’t really know her well, but she did seem nice, so I told him to go and talk to her, which he did after a few minutes of convincing from me. I watched their interaction play out, and from their respective body languages it seemed to go well. He came back a few minutes later, told me he liked her even more, but hadn’t been confident to suggest that he was interested in her in that way or ask for her number, and that she was leaving now with her friends. Sure enough I looked back and she was headed for the door. It was too late to stop her. So I got to thinking, “How can I help a brother out?” (Apparently I think like a homie), and came to the conclusion that he needed her number. I told him to go to the birthday dude and ask to see his new phone, in which would be her number! It was a good plan I thought, but birthday dude was (although drunk) kind of sceptical of him and his motives. And it didn’t help that birthday dude also liked the same girl! So unfortunately he couldn’t get into the phonebook because birthday dude was looking over his shoulder and wanted his phone back to take a picture of himself with some other mates. Beer-buying friend returned to me, despondent. But I told him not to worry, that I’d get the number by the end of the night. Birthday dude trusted me a lot more, and I was feeling crafty.

So about 30 minutes later I approached birthday dude, asked to see his cool new phone, pretended to look at things through the camera on it whilst actually going into his phonebook and memorising the girl’s number, gave the phone back to birthday dude, quickly entered it into my phone, then returned triumphant to beer-buying friend. I lived up to the 007 part of my email address that night.

Anyway, I go to another one of birthday dude’s parties recently, and who’s there? Beer-buying, pool-teaming friend and beer-buying, pool-teaming friend’s girl that he liked! And who’s together as a couple? They are! Apparently after that night they’d started corresponding but then she’d got glandular fever for two months and things went a bit quiet between them. But when she got better they started talking again and hey presto! They really liked each other and started a relationship. Both of them were very grateful to me. I just smiled and said that I was happy to be of service. It did feel rewarding though. Knowing that I had such an influence on two people’s lives and their happiness. Felt good. :)

And that’s it for now. Wonder what I’ll be next time? And what other ways I’ll be able to self-promote myself? A spy? A sports star? A modest person?

Dale.