You probably heard about it

I’m a pretty friendly guy and I’m always willing to chat to a new friendly person and maybe make a new friend. It works well for me. Every time I go to town I strike up a conversation with at least one stranger and, after about ten minutes, we go our separate ways as friends. Sometimes we even catch up at a later date to shoot the breeze or a wallaby. One of the nicest people I ever met was a catholic priest who happened to be standing behind me in Toys R Us. We got talking and we established that we had a lot in common, and we agreed to catch up for a coffee later that day. He had some ‘lovely things to do to the children’ and I had to throw rocks at trees in the botanic gardens, so it wasn’t as if either of us had to wait for the other one. We met for a couple of drinks and before I knew it I was waking up in the parklands wearing golfer’s pants and a blonde wig. Time (apparently) flies when you’re (apparently) having fun. I didn’t hear from him again – his office informed me that he’d gone to Thailand on business or something. Nice guy though, really liked kids.


I try to keep this ‘talking to strangers’ thing going despite setbacks like the Monsignor Francis incident. Talking to strangers is a great way to spend the day and an excellent way to meet new and exciting people. I stay in contact with most of the people I meet, even if the court has asked me not to. Besides, really, who are they to tell me who I can’t speak to? They don’t know my friends like I do. Only I understand them. I’m special. They’re special. It’s meant to be.


Despite the insistence of a guy who had the nerve to call himself a ‘Supreme Court Judge’ I went to Adelaide’s only street today to buy some duct tape and make some new friends. Adelaide’s great like that; it’s so small that you’re just bound to run into someone you like! I started at the East end of town, the home of the swanky cafés. There was something about the smell of coffee that excited me today and made me feel lucky. I strolled down the street and gave a friendly smile to each person I walked past. Some of them returned the smile, others looked at me coldly, and some others just ignored me completely. Their loss I guess, they don’t know what they’re missing. Someone else was going to feel the cold tendrils of my friendship today whether they liked it or not. My new friend wasn’t going to be the tall redhead though – there was something about her that was a bit disquieting. I think it was her nose; it just didn’t look right. The fishnet stockings made sense because, apparently, that’s fashionable at the moment, and the knee-high boots worked too on some level, but it all seemed a bit unnatural. It might have been the Adam’s apple that threw me, but I’m not certain on that. A homeless person asked me for change when I was just a few blocks down the city’s only street and I managed to avoid giving him any by playing dead. I lay there for forty eight minutes. Someone had called an ambulance but I’d whispered, in my most dramatic voice, ‘Please stop, I’m alright. I’m just trying to skip out on giving this homeless guy any money,’ in the paramedic’s ear as she went down for another CPR-breath. She sure didn’t like people faking their own deaths, and she liked it even less when they groped her. She slapped me across the face as I went for yet another grope. Turns out unconscious people don’t have a groping reflex. I tried to tell her that I’d read on the internet that they did but she just threatened to press charges unless I went away. I dodged the homeless guy on the way out and stole a hat from a worried bystander in order to make good my escape. Police HATE it when you steal their hats.


I was in a jail cell at the police station for two hours before they let me go. They told me that they hoped I’d ‘learned my lesson’, and that they’d press charges if I did it again. I left before they could check my cell - that mess was going to take HOURS to clean up, and there was no way in hell I was going to be blamed for it because they had no proof. Incidentally, I’ve got some wicked footage to upload to Youtube later.
Fortunately for me, and whoever had to hose down my cell, it was still early in the afternoon and I had plenty of time to make a new friend. What made my day even better was that the police station was at the West end of the city, so getting arrested had actually saved me some time. There was no telling how many times I would’ve needed to play dead on my way across town if I’d walked. The good thing about the West end of town is that there are lots of people to talk to, and most of them have great stories to tell. There’s one woman in the West end who can talk for hours about how many sailors have seen her bed. She must be a damn fine bed salesperson, especially when you consider the state of her uniform. Her hygiene leaves nothing to the imagination either – this woman could write an encyclopaedia on sores and infections if she wanted to. She probably wouldn’t want to though since it’d take up a lot of her time; time that could be better spent selling beds to sailors. There’s also guy in the West end who shouts at the sky, and another who shouts at the ground. They’re always good for a laugh. I once told the sky-yeller that he was actually shouting at the ground, and the ground-yeller that he was shouting at the sky. They were so confused that they didn’t say a word for days. They’re great guys though – always good for a chat, as long as you want to talk about the sky (or the ground). Just a helpful piece of advice though: do NOT under ANY circumstances talk about the horizon. As far as they‘re concerned that shit doesn’t exist and if you even THINK about raising the subject then you may as well call the firemen right there and then because they’re the only ones who’ll be able to save you.


I walked further west past the rambling tramps until I reached the very end of the only street in town. As I reached the corner I was approached by a woman dressed like a rainbow. She had clothes pegs in her hair and a giant smile painted across her forehead in lipstick. She was beautiful, like a bipolar clown or a diseased raincoat, and she knew it. She danced across the pavement like a drunken bicycle and waved at me to stop. I stopped. It is unwise to anger a kaleidoscopic bear. She looked deeply into my eyes and beckoned me closer. I moved closer. She cocked her head to the side, and indicated that I should mimic her. I did so. She was so close that I could smell the talcum powder which covered her neck and one of her arms. She leaned closer and whispered, directly into my ear, ‘Do you… believe?’
‘Do I believe what?’ I asked.
‘Do you believe in HIM?’ she said as she pointed to the sky with a finger much like a concert pianist’s.
I didn’t answer her and instead looked at the bleeding finger she held in her hand. I simply HAD to have one.
She pressed on.
‘Do you believe in HE WHO CREATES ALL?’ She shouted the last bit and it hurt my ears. I jumped back slightly, but not too far – I still wanted to know where she’d found the finger and how much she’d paid for it. Not wanting to seem rude, I stood next to her and said, quite politely, ‘No. I think that’s a preposterous question and I take great umbrage in the fact that you should even ask me such a thing on such a glorious day. I am a man of science, my good lady,’ I said, pointing to my microscope, ‘and you would do well to question yourself in regard to such matters.’
She grinned at me with her stupid toothless mouth and said, ‘Dearie, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day.’
I bowed, but not so much as to leave the back of my neck entirely undefended, and took a step backwards, keen to find a different crazy clown to befriend in the remaining hour I had left on the street. The rainbow woman, for no logical reason, leapt at me like an invisible fucking goat, screamed ‘PREPARE FOR THE RAPTURE’ and turned into a massive fuck-off dinosaur. She started stomping all over the place and would’ve eaten me if I hadn’t used sky-yeller and ground-yeller as crazy human shields. She smashed up half the damn city before the window washers came and saved the day.
It was all over the news, you probably heard about it.