Streams of Fury

Once again I find myself at Gosford train station. And ONCE AGAIN there is another incident I have to report to my readers. This time it wasn't a physical altercation between two or more parties, and instead this only involved a single person, with a supporting class of the entire train station.

The other side of the station is the Sydney bound side, so there is always more people there waiting, and since there is usually only the same 5 people on my side I'm always looking at the other people, for curiosity sake, I like to spot funny looking people and relay my sightings to Rhys over at The Plastic Age for funtimes and many lulz. And another reason, which I'll admit, is that the Sydney bound train always has a few attractive girls waiting there, nothing wrong with a bit of eye candy to get me through my 3 hour commute. The downside is most attractive Gosford girls also dress like prostitutes and swear like sailors, but you have to take the good with the bad.

I had just finished my scan of the platform, about half of the people waiting for the train where Parramatta Eels supporters on their way into Sydney to watch the start of the Rugby League season for 2010. There were some skater kids trying to bust out some moves, and a few derros on the far left side, standing in a circle and having several cigarettes.

I was about to find a bench to sit on when I heard a weird noise, it was like a cough only much wetter, and what followed it was a series of yells and lots of people moving.

I walked closer to see what the commotion was about and saw everyone on the other platform walking quickly away from an old man sitting on a bench. he was hunched over coughing, then he sat up, and at that exact time a stream of vomit flew out his mouth and nostrils, like a garden sprinkler in a straight line.

The old man then finished vomiting.

FIVE MINUTES LATER.

I swear to god this old guy just kept vomiting, and vomiting, and vomiting, and vomiting. And not once did he move from his seated position. It was a stream of brown liquid flowing from his face, interrupted by heavy coughing and people asking if he was alright, he didn't respond to them at all, nor did he even acknowledge their existence. He was stuck in his own little world of vomit. It looked like something out of a zombie movie. An infected old man struggling as he died horribly by the virus before he arose once more as one of the living dead. But this wasn't the case.

Station staff tried to get his attention but couldn't get close to him, as every time someone walked near him another stream of vomit would fly out of his mouth, he'd then wipe his mouth and a large stream of saliva and mucus would hang between his lips and his arm, it reminded me of really hot cheese when you eat pizza, how it gets all stringy and sticks to the base.

When he finally finished vomiting, he sat there for a few minutes not bothering to explain it to the people around him, a staff member approached him with a bucket and forcibly moved him with a few pushes of her mop, as she needed to clean the area in front of him, which was a slipping hazard, not to mention it was beginning to smell.

He shuffled off to the next bench and pulled out a cigarette, which he began to smoke like it was his last.

I'm not a smoker, but is the taste of a cigarette really the first thing you want after a vomiting spree?

He was also dressed really poorly but had brand new shoes on. I can't help but assume he didn't pay for them, and maybe held off a cashier at the shoe store, armed with his ability to projectile vomit. I know I'd do what he said if he threatened to puke on me...

Additional!

As I was writing this I overheard the conversation between three teenage boys, the words were barely audible over the wet smacking noises that came from their mouths as they chewed gum of sorts. One of the boys was trying to remember the name of a TV show "The Chasers War on Everything" which used to air on ABC.

B1: Hey you remember that show?

B2: what show?

B1: it was a show with some guys in it, and it was their war against the world

B2: nah don't know it

B1: yeah man they were hitchhikers from Australia

B2: I dunno

B1: and it was on the ABC, the war on the worlds people

B2: nah man shutup I dunno

B1: yeah you do, they did that Obama bin laden (That's right, Obama Bin Laden) thing with the Olympics (G8 Summit actually)

B2: Oh yeah they were on the news, the chasing war

B1: nah man, the War of the Worlds

B2: that was a movie

B1: nah they didn't make a movie, it was 4 guys and they did stuff.

B2: I saw the movie, it had Tom Cruise in it and that chick who was a girl (.. chick who was a girl)

B1: Oh yeah that movie was shit ay.

B2: it was okay but yeah it was shit.

B1: But it's not the movie I mean, in this show they did stuff with John Howard

B2: Stuff with John Howard?

B1: yeah they called him a dickhead all the time.

B2: Hahaha! that show sounds awesome, when's it on?

B1: nah it stopped being on like last year.

B2: oh shit ay, true

B1: yeah, well it was a pretty funny show.

B2: what was it called again?

B1: The war of the worlds

B2: Nah man that was the movie

B1: maybe it had the same name?

B2: oh true, yeah we should see it on youtube.

B1: that's a mad site ay

B2: yeah heaps.

By this point in time I had completely forgotten why they were even talking about The Chaser's War on Everything, and they didn't even bother to remember, as one of them found a pen on the train and decided to play a game of "I'll draw something and you guess what it is". Trouble was they didn't have any paper so they used the back of the seat in front of them until they realised there were newspapers all over the place, and moved on to draw moustaches on the women.

One of their drawing contests went as follows, I listened to this one because one of the boys mentioned Batman, and anything Batman I'm all over. Freaking LOVE Batman.

B1: is it batman?

B2: nah it's not batman

B1: fuck off it's batman

B2: it's not fucking Batman

B1: then it's that robin

B2: nup

B1: can you give me a hint?

B2: it's a video game guy

B1: Batman's got a video game

B2: it's not fucking batman

B1: ay settle I'm just saying

B2: it's a monkey

B1: oh yeah, it's that guy from the game on the wii where you beat up the zelda dude and mario

B2: yeah what's his name

B1: it's like king kong but it's something else

B2: not getting it till you guess it.

B1: ummmm

B2: think of an animal

B1: yeah he's a monkey

B2: nah man another animal, like a horse

B1: .... cow kong.. nah...

B2: haha cow kong you fucking retard

B1: shutup i'm guessing out loud. Donkey Kong

B2: EEERRRRR took your time.

Boganrail, the Revenge.

Another day, another incident at Gosford train station.

I was sitting at the platform enjoying my now daily treat of redskins and milkos when the all stops train pulled into the station. The usual faces piled out in a quiet shuffle, happy that their mundane day was coming to a close. Then a ruckus was heard emerging from the train.

YOU FUCKING KIWI CUNT FUCKING CUNT I'LL FUCKING TAKE YOU NOW FUCKING CUNT.

The tirade of abuse was spewing forth like an unchecked oil fire was coming from a man of 40 to 50 years in age. Sporting traditional Australian attire of board shorts and thongs with a duffel bag, he stumbled from the train backwards, his free arm shooting out to regain balance. He turned on the balls of his feet and with the arm already extended formed a pointing gesture with his hand. He shot the menacing digit at another gentleman who had began to emerge from the train.

I use the term gentleman lightly, as the man would be no more than 2 years my senior. He was a well built lad rippling with muscles barely contained by his singlet top. Ink scattered all over his body in various tribal designs and patterns. He was of islander appearance, but which specific island I could not tell you. I do know however he lacked the build to be of the Samoan or Tongan persuasion.

The young man the force of the abuse and retorted accordingly

YOU TALKING BIG EH BRO WHY YOU RUNNING? COME FUCKEN HERE AND WE'LL SORT IT OUT ON THE PLATFORM YOU FUCKEN CUNT.

To which the older gent replied

FUCKING KIWI CUNT I'LL FUCKING TAKE YOU CUNT YOU FUCKING THINK YOU'RE FUCKING TOUGH CUNT I CAN TAKE 2 KIWIS MYSELF CUNTS YOU FUCKS.

The heated discussion was in full swing. I dared not move from my sitting position in close radius, lest my movements scare the local townsfolk. Instead I chose to complete my sudoku puzzle before my train arrived, listening in to their intense conversation so I could relay it to all six people who read my blog.

The younger man, who remained in the train, once again invited the elder to a rousing bout of fisticuffs.

FUCKING COME BACK IF YOU CAN TAKE ME CUNT, YOU WANT TO PUSH OVER AN OLD MAN CUNT I'LL FUCK YOU UP.

Aha! The motive behind the conversation had been revealed!

SEE YOU IN SYDNEY CUNT I'LL FUCKING SEE YOU IN SYD-GOSFORD FUCKING CUNT SHIT FUCK.

The older man grew weary of the battle and confusion had set in, he stumbled further away from the train and spun to find himself face to face with five security guards.

HE'S THE FUCKING ONE CUNT WHO FUCKING STARTED IT THE FUCK

His heightened adrenalin levels proved to be his folly, as the men in blue did not take kindly to his raised voice at such close range.

Meanwhile the tattooed lad conversed in a more quiet manner to the other guards, it was proven that the senior did indeed push over and even older man in an effort to leave the train post-haste. And the islander fellow rushed to defend the enfeebled gent's honour.

My train rolled in to the station silently amongst the background noise.

I took my leave from the ghastly scene and fell into a peaceful slumber, aided by the charming melodies, of those who fight foo.

Vampire turds that glisten in the sun

Social Networking, it's a buzzword thrown around by a lot of websites in the last few years, the phrase means "connecting and communicating with others over the internets" and websites like MySpace and Facebook are the hubs people use to connect socially with others. although in reality the majority of people on the internet will limit their social networking to adding that cute girl/boy from high school as a friend then downloading all of their personal photos to use as a masturbatory aide.

MySpace and Facebook are the big generic two, but there are also plenty of websites that cater to a more specific audience, there are social networking sites for gamers, bloggers, homosexuals, christians, christian homosexuals, hairy men, lonely men who want asian girlfriends, and of course there is VampireFreaks.

VampireFreaks, according to Wikipedia, is an online community for the gothic/industrial subculture. But realistically VampireFreaks is the home of people who rebelled

against their parents in high school and forgot to grow the fuck up in later life. The males all list their hero as "The Crow", and the females would probably get their vagina on webcam if you sent them a single compliment about their hair. It's a hovel of stench, a tribute to failure. Every single member probably thinks they're a unique delicate flower but listen to all the same heavy metal industrial shit as the next member.

So in true FiveThumbsDown fashion, it's caption time!

Here's your base level generic VampireFreaks member. Pasty and pudgy with long hair, throwing the horns because they can't grasp the intricities of common decency. This person's account lists their gender as "N/A", and I'd have to agree with it.

DO: Take a photo for your VampireFreaks profile

DONT: Take a photo of your sex face for your VampireFreaks profile

Goth gangsta will fuck you up boooooiiiiiiiiiiiii

*ACTUAL PROFILE QUOTE*

---------------

DISLIKES

People who are not original

LIKES

Anime

Ninja Turtles

Cheese

------------

I see a conflict of interest here....

Check out this one... it's..... pretty nice actually. Let's check out her profile.

"21 yr old married mother of two"

Ah, nevermind, tainted meat.

This is the type of photo they show on the news with soundbytes from neighbours saying "I had no idea, he mostly kept to himself"

I don't know if this is supposed to be a photo of a girl, or evidence of bigfoot.

"I cast a level 6 wizard charm on your labia, it wasn't very effective...."

"Tee Hee, I'm such a vampire FREAAAAK!!!! Edward <3<3<3<3<3>

Another swamp monster sighting, why do people think boosting the contrast is going to make a good photo?

Middle American High School Female VampireFreak #4586779581235, Her parents don't understand her, her boyfriend doesn't love her, and she cuts herself while listening to The Cure. She'll drop out before the end of high school, pregnant to "Steve", her 29yr old ex boyfriend who is a major player over at 7-11.

Profile quote: "I like goth"

*crickets chirping*

"Hey ladiesssss, I'm a rippling mess of sinew and bad hair, I love the Crow so fucking much because he and I are the same, I'm a dark avenger in the night flexing my buttocks in the face of sailors."

Using strategic lighting and photoshop airbrushing his body says "roids" and his face says "pnuenomia".

"Me am Samet, are like lady vampire"

Sweet jesus, looks like she fell face first into Nickelodeon.

The Musical VampireFreak

They'll list four hundred bands as "close influences" and every single name will adhere to one of these rules:

- Have one or more of the words "hate/death/blood/kill/hell/cuddles"

- Be an obscure reference to a B Grade horror movies or a song by another band

- Have a name so abstract and wanky nobody bothers to understand the meaning

The musical VampireFreak will be one of the most saught after in the social networking circles, because as soon as you mention you can do anything music related, people will throw their genitals at you.

This member in particular has it all, the "geek chic" glasses, the indoor hoodie, and the backpack of mystery. This member is also particulary efficient as to get the maximum musical effect by posing with a bass guitar, unfortunately judging by the price tags in the background showing us that they're posing with a store owned guitar, this person probably has little to no musical talent. That'd be like myself posing in front of a movie theatre and listing my profession as "Matt Damon".

Nice look dude, you should have used some ofthat white paint on your teeth.

MOST

DEDICATED

GOTH

EVER

Boganrail, an Australian Institution

The first week back at work after a break is always the longest. And to make matters worse the Cityrail free newspaper MX (url) is currently not being printed. My one salvation from boredom for half of my trip has been cut off. So I've been forced to find other ways to amuse myself.

This week I've been experimenting with the various trains that go my direction home, finding out which is the quickest, which is the most comfortable, and which is the least crowded. I caught one of the newer trains to Gosford this afternoon. Hardly anyone in there so I had plenty of room to stretch my legs. But on the downside I had to wait at Gosford for half an hour.

Now Gosford really isn't that bad of an area. It's th

e locals themselves that ruin it for you, and of course the majority of the locals are advocates of public transport by default. So I always run into the most colourful of characters, today was no exception.

To pass my 30 minutes away and fend off the guilt of downing an entire packet of chips in record time, I began walking up and down the platform, a good 100-200 metres. On my second loop I walked past a girl I paid no real attention to, she was a normal looking female around 16yrs old, Elmo shirt, dyed hair, and a scooter. Typical teenager in all senses of the word, or so I thought anyway.

When I was walking back from my second loop the girl was sitting at the far end looking directly across to the platform on the other side of the tracks. There were some youths sitting there, smoking and carrying on like adults, I paid no mind to them either, as I'm well past the stage where the site of a swearing smoking tween shocks me. And after all, this IS the Central Coast we're talking about here.

The girl and the kids were exchanging dialog, but from where I was walking I couldn't hear it. I assumed they were friends and started on my 3rd loop, walking faster this time, well aware that most of the other people on the platform were staring at me. I don't know why but apparently the sight of a fella walking is fucking interesting to them.

On my loop return the girl had since moved and was walking towards my direction. She seemed reasonably angry, and it was confirmed when she muttered to herself as I passed her.

"Fucken cunt skags, I'm gonna slash some fucken throats"

Now this did come as a shock to me, call me uppity but if children decided to throw insults at me from across a train line I'd either ignore them or smile and nod my head. But this girl decided that this was the point in their life that they were destined to die, and proceeded to make five phone calls to various people.

I stopped walking and stood around a corner, so I could listen without staring, and I'm glad I did.

Each phone conversation went along the lines of this:

"Yeah , what are ya doin? I need you to come here and beat up som fucken kids for me, I can't do it coz they're fucken too young but if you beat em I'll slash em ay? Fuckin cunt whores calling me a boy i'll fucken show em yeah. There three of the fuckers, fucking skinny cunts."

Around the time of the 4th phone call, the all-stops train from Sydney arrived and even more representatives of the Central Coast piled out, including three women in their mid-30's with more children than teeth.

As the women walked past, the original girl on the phone had just reached her "three skanky cunts" line, and all three of the women turned around and proceeded to pick a fight with the teenager.

"What'd you fucken call me? You red haired tranny, tranny cunt fuck"

The platform at the time was crowded with people getting on and off trains, and admist it all was the battle of the slums 2010. No fists were thrown, just a lot of slander and abuse.

Eventually the women left and the girl had moved on to the next platform to deal with her aggressors. I'm sure she has a bright future ahead of her as a "whore slasher" and I wish her well.

A Tale of Poor Management

Everyone who has ever had a job has had a bad boss, it's a given. And usually the worse the job the worse the boss. I was first introduced to the world of poor management when I started my working life at the minimum age in my state, 14 years and 9 months.

My father has always been big on the phrase "if you don't have a job then you're a drain on society" so despite my wishes to watch Pokemon and Wrestling, I was forced to trudge the 2km walk to work every Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon to earn my 6 dollars an hour. The job itself wasn't hard, just monotonous, as all grocery store jobs are.

Like Jim from The Office I did the minimum amount of required work in order to stay just above being fired, and that's the way I liked it. I started on checkouts, standing up for 6 hours isn't for everyone, and it certainly wasn't for me, so when I got recorded as the slowest checkout operator ever to work there they moved me to shelf stacking, where I was in my element.

You see, I'm an organisation freak, I love stacking things and sorting my goods into perfect order. If you ever glanced at my "xxx" file on my computer you'd find I have an intricate filing system to maximise masturbatory efficiency.

I was king of the "face up", where every night we went up and down the aisles, relocating misplaced goods, and stacking everything up so it looked like the shelves were fully stocked. I was always in the tinned foods aisles, I freaking loved stacking tins....

I probably could have picked my lifelong career then and there, as back in my early days "aiming high" wasn't in my vocabulary. Luckily for me however, my boss was a complete and utter tool.

Nigel was a man in his mid 40's, worked out at the gym enough to have a body most mid40's men didn't, a combination of muscle and sag. And he sported a long greasy ponytail, which I assume was a deep brown colour when he started it, but by the time I met him the end of the long length of hair was dead and grey.

Nigel was your typical middle aged man trying to act half his age. He would brag about women he'd pick up, and yammer on about the nightclubs and fights he got into there. To any other 14yr old boy I'd assume Nigel would be some sort of hero and cool dude to look up to. But to me Nigel was nothing more than a sad old man trying to capture his wasted youth.

He was also a big fan of jokes, really really stupid jokes. And being the boss I wasn't sure if I was supposed to laugh or tell him his jokes were stupid... I tried the latter and coincidentally I was working the night shift for the next two weeks.

But all in all Nigel did what he was supposed to, and that was work hard and get the young kids to do the shitty jobs. And although he was a failure as a person, he was perfectly fine for a shift boss. He just happened to be an unfunny douche bag who took naps in the storage closet and made a song about milk using only the word milk.

The next horrible boss I had was a guy named Wayne when I worked a thrilling 2 days as a telemarketer during a brief unemployed stint in my life. Wayne was the type of person who had a really shitty job to begin with, but he was in his element in that turd. Wayne was the self proclaimed messiah of telemarketing, and was convinced you could call people at work or home, and sell them a holiday.

To quote his introductory speech to the new batch of recruits: "this fucking holiday.. is a fucking good deal, if I wasn't too fucking busy selling fucking holidays I'd fucking buy one".

In all honesty the holiday was reasonably cheap, but it was to a place I've never heard of and the limitations were annoying, you had to pay for the holiday on your credit card, but couldn't go on it for at least 4 months, and it was for 4 or 2 adults and 2 children plus it had to take place on a weekend in March when the moon was full after a virgin sacrifice to Ra, the sun god, was made.

Wayne loved to swear, and intimidate, he was in the position where he knew 75% of all new recruits would give up by the end of the week, so he decided the best course of action was to cut formalities and treat everyone like shit, which was a bad move for Wayne because my wife was one of the new recruits too. And she was one of the people selected for a berating when she couldn't follow the poorly spelt and grammatically incorrect "script" we were to read from, that went along the lines of this.

"Hello, I'm of here to sell you a holiday"

*please wait 3 seconds for confirmation from answerer or the phone being slammed down*

"This is a great deal, oh wow I wish I could buy this deal, it's for for to .

*please wait 3 seconds for confirmation from answerer or the phone being ripped out of the socket*

It only costs on your credit card *avoid most details till we have their card number*

It was a stupid script that reeked of scam, and once he had a go at about 7 people, the missus included, I decided that this job was not for me and every second Wayne wasn't near me I altered the script to something a bit more forward:

"G'day, I'm selling cheap holidays, want one?"

I sold 4 holidays using the Tom method, I should be a fucking marketer.

At that point in my life I had gone through 5 jobs, and the 2 I enjoyed the least were the 2 with bad bosses. I didn't think about the connection for a while but it took 1 more job to help me see the light.

It was my last semester at university and I had recently proposed to my fiance, we were living together in a little house and I had just finished a contract with not a bad boss, but an incompetent moron who liked to "fudge" financial numbers and "forgot" to tell me that tax wasn't taken out of my pay. So the government hit me with a chunky bill which my student centrelink payments couldn't afford.

I went in search of work to all manner of places, and was turned down mostly because of my university hours and age, why hire a 22yr old when you can hire a 15yr old for nearly half the pay?

On the bus to uni I noticed a sign makers business that had changed their sign slightly to say "we do web design!" and I thought "hell yeah", I rang them up, and although they weren't hiring I managed to bombard them with a sexy resume and a can-do attitude and got a position as a graphic designer / sign installer.

The boss was a weasel from the get go. Let's call him Bob.

On my first day Bob hit me up with a 40 page contract which outlined the following

- The position I was being paid for had no set "award" and therefore he could pay me whatever the fuck he wanted

- He decided to pay me 2 dollars less than what I'd earn as a new recruit at McDonald's

- My position was classed as "casual" yet required me to work 8.5 hours a day, 6 days a week

- because I was casual I was not entitled to holidays or sick days

- Lunch was 20 minutes and I must eat lunch in the lunch room, which was a corner in the office with 2 chairs facing each other, making every lunch uncomfortable and awkward.

Did I mentioned that when I worked on weekends I wasn't being paid for it? Bob sent me to a "mandatory" public speaking class so I could "interact with clients better", and he paid for it, but I had to work to pay him back. He also paid for a year long gym membership for me because I had to lose weight, I don't really know why I had to though.. but I had to work to pay back that too.

So from the get go Bob shot up to the top of the list of bad bosses. He was controlling little weasel of a man who squeezed the life out of me, I wanted to quit, but there was a lack of jobs in the area at the time, and I was juggling my job with uni and my soon to be married life.

Working at the sign place wasn't a complete drag, when he left me alone (he had a habit of looking over my shoulder when I worked) I managed to belt out some decent designs that the clients loved, and I also started working with a high school kid on the Saturdays who is now one of my closest friends. we had laughs at times, but most of them were nervous "laugh or you might get fired" laughs.

* Let me take a break from this article.. I'm sitting on the train writing and the woman behind me is slurping from a milk carton.. a fucking 1 litre milk carton... STOP FUCKING SLURPING, YOU'RE 60 YEARS OLD NOT 4. SHE'S BEEN SLURPING FOR 10 MINUTES NOW, IT SOUNDS LIKE A LIZARD TAKING A SHIT*

About 4 months into my job I began to see a side in Bob that was a tad creepy, I had heard he had a string of former employees that left for reasons unknown, when I asked why he didn't answer and dodged the question, especially when I asked about a former female employee.

It all started one day when this guy who sometimes worked with us on sign installs rang up and asked if I wanted a job with him, I didn't really know the guy so I was a bit hesitant, he was a nice guy but worked about 25km's out from where I lived and I didn't own a car at the time. When I told Bob he rang I was ordered to never talk to him again and not to let him into the building.

A few days later we all received an email saying that this guy had talked to a previous female employee, and now he knew "all Bob's dirty little secrets". At first I thought nothing of it, and put it down to the guy trying to piss Bob off.. but as the weeks went on more and more came to light.

Two weeks later Bob was talking about hiring some new staff and asked if I could clean up his old computer to prepare it for a new employee, While I was uninstalling some crap off the machine I browsed the net, went to some news websites etc, and the Internet explorer crashed when I was reading an interesting article. So when I reloaded the browser I went into the history tab to find that article and instead found something much more interesting... 99% of all the websites in the history tab were pornographic websites. And after a small amount of searching I found an epic stash of pornography on the hard drive.

While browsing for porn isn't illegal, it's just unprofessional, and a few days later when I came to him with a new client project I noticed he had porn open on his machine as he fumbled to close the window. I pretended I didn't notice but inside I was starting to get a little bit creeped out, after sign installs he'd sometimes walk around without a shirt on, and we were the only 2 people there.. and he's definitely not the type of person who can get away with being shirtless.

My limit was reached one Thursday afternoon when Bob and his wife came to me, and asked if I would mind if they installed a security camera to watch the new female employees, because apparently one of the last employees, a female, sued Bob for sexual harassment and he didn't do anything. After everything I found and witnessed though, I was more than sure he was capable of something like that.

I managed to track down the girl and find out her story, Bob had taken her to a conference in a city and given the distance from home he had set up a hotel room for the night, with 2 beds as you'd assume. She went to bed when he was in the shower, and 10 minutes later she found herself in bed with a hairy short man in his underwear, at which point she freaked out and ran out of the hotel to sleep in his car. The next day Bob kicked her out, gave her money for the train, and left her there. And fired her 2 days later citing a "conflict of interest".

Around that time I had graduated, and using my fancy new degree I managed to land a job in a much better field of programming, being paid more than double with full time benefits. I told Bob I was going to the doctors one afternoon, and never came back.

All names have been changed for legal reasons.