I found out today that Santa doesn't live at the North Pole. He doesn't drive a sled or have dozens of elves scurrying around his feet.

Santa drives a bus for the Brisbane council.

Times are tough, eh?

I guess we've all moonlighted in jobs that we haven't been proud of at one time or another. In my younger days I picked watermelons to earn a dollar. Maybe I should say attempted to pick watermelons, as I had the job of standing in an eight foot cardboard box on the back of a truck as workmates threw watermelons in at me. Often more than one at a time. Or completely without warning. Or after I'd been hit on the head for the hundredth time that hour and was obviously unconscious, bleeding and in need of medical assistance on the bottom of the box. In hindsight it's a miracle I didn't get shipped off to market under half a ton of melons at some point.

Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, Santa.

I must say I was surprised this morning when the Santa bus pulled up to my stop, complete with miles of tinsel wound around the interior and on the windows, christmas lights, a tree and Santa himself in full gear at the wheel. I didn't spot a nativity scene but it was undoubtedly there somewhere.

Times have obviously been tough on the big guy of late, and he sounded a lot more like a grumpy Brisbane bus driver who was forced to wear a stinking hot red suit and beard on a warm day, but I'm probably just reading too much into things. I'm sure even Santa has his off days.

Anyhow, make sure you are all listening on Christmas eve for the screech of tires on your roof.

Posted by Bonestorm at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

I saw an interesting thing on the bus yesterday morning. It was a person in the front seat entranced by a Gameboy.

Not normally noteworthy, I know. Unless you perhaps consider the specifics of the person, who happened to be a middle aged business woman in a power suit. Not your average acne riddled 13 year old, to be sure.

Probably even more interesting to me was how engrossed she was in it all. Not once in 20 minutes did her eyes leave the lcd screen, even when frustration got the better of her and she resorted to slamming the palm of her hand against the gizmo in fury. It reminded me of a recalcitrant chimp slamming it's hands against the bars of it's cage.

And I can't really be too critical of her here, since I've done some desk slamming with my fist during countless hours of Madden football, but at least I've had the decency to do it in the privacy of my own home.

She eventually got off at the stop before mine. The last I saw of her she was motoring up a ramp towards the street with her eyes still fixated on the Gameboy.

Posted by Bonestorm at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments

Yesterday I went grocery shopping by myself, as Ms B was busy decorating ginger bread houses and christmas cakes with her mother. Shopping on my lonesome normally results in me doing a 'speed shop'. I hurtle down each aisle, flailing wildy at shelves as I speed past at high velocity. Sometimes I end up with the things I need, other times not. It all depends on what gets knocked into the trolley.

Either way, I'm done in fifteen minutes, which is all I really care about.

Yesterday I couldn't help but notice one couple, scrawny and heavily inked, who were pushing around three little girls in a trolley and screaming at them Don't touch that!! at regular intervals. As chance would have it, I picked the checkout with the slowest checkout person in the universe. This not only ruined my attempt at speed shopping, but also allowed the scrawny family to get through ahead of me at another checkout.

As I finally left my checkout, I noticed mother scrawny in the middle of the shopping centre walkway with the three little girls in the shopping trolley. To my horror she decided to play a game with the girls and gripped the trolley handle, spinning it around her in a circular motion as fast as possible.

On the first revolution, I wondered how she avoided cleaning up all of the innocent bystanders who were walking past. Shoppers were leaping out of the way left, right and centre as the trolley screeched around in a wide arc.

On the second revolution I could only only stop and stare and think that something bad was about to happen.

On the third revolution, something bad happened. The smallest girl in the end of the trolley lost her battle with centrifugal force and was catapulted out of the trolley, sailed through the air for a metre and a half, and then hit the unyielding concrete head first.

Thankfully she seemed to be ok.

But I could only wonder about the perils of mixing kids and stupid people.

Posted by Bonestorm at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments