more overheard

Yesterday outside my office: 'Dude, that smells like asparagus... juice!'
Later: 'So, do you drink a lot of asparagus juice?'

This morning on the tram which has stopped at a tram stop, woman on her mobile: 'Hi I'm on the tram which has just stopped, I don't know why.' Shortly afterwards, she said 'I'm at Grattan street, can I walk there from here?' only she pronounced Grattan as (au) gratin, when it should be pronounced like, you know, Michelle Grattan. I could possibly have forgiven this second loud pronouncement only the girl sitting facing me was rolling her eyes and silently laughing and I felt I had to conspiratorially empathise commuter-listening-in-to-dumb-phone-conversation-to-commuter-listening-in-to-dumb-phone-conversation. So I condemned the woman on the phone.

it's summer, let's get mundane

Hot day. On my way home a girl of abut five on a bike offered me 'free lollipops for five dollars.' I said, 'that's a terrible deal'. 'It's not very good, is it,' she agreed, then suggested 'two dollars'. I considered later that she might have meant three lollipops, but who really knows. A minute ago I was putting out the recycling and the girl (six? seven?) across the street was screaming, 'Help! I'm murdered!' then just 'hello!'. If I bent down, I could see her through the neighbours' carport. I said hello then she disappeared.

By the way that reminds me when I was on the train a couple of days ago I heard a woman talking on her phone, she was talking about how she'd parked her car to catch a train and she 'just parked it in some random street'. This I think is perhaps the first example I've experienced of a melding of the old concept of random and the new. The only indication of the new meaning was admittedly that she said it in a slightly in-sane voice.

holy shit!

Yesterday evening I got on the train at Strathmore going north and a young guy was talking to a friend on one of those hands free things so he seemed really to be talking into the air. He said 'Uh, Strathmore' and the friend said something and he said 'Oh, bullshit, what do I do?' and it was pretty clear he was going in the wrong direction. He said, 'How far to Southern Cross?' and got an answer, then said he'd talk to his friend soon. And then he just went and sat down. And I thought, do I say something to him like, 'you do realise you're going the wrong way?' and then I thought, oh well he's young maybe that was some kind of elaborate sardonic game, I'll stay out of it. But then after about five minutes he said to the woman next to him, 'Excuse me, how far is it to Southern Cross?' and she said, 'you're going the wrong way' and he got up and she and someone else said to him, 'it's about ten stations in the other direction' and we were at Oak Park by this stage and she said, 'You're going to have to get off here, and go under the platform and catch the train going back that way.'

'Holy shit', said the guy. And alighted.

lines spoken by a young man on the train fat and round enough that, scaled down, he could have been a young girl - but let's not judge him on that

'I found out my boss takes his cat to the pub to pick up bitches! What a fuckin' poof!'