I am fairly used to having odd weeks – when you are an Unwin you find that the weird is very common and needs embracing, otherwise it kills you in hilariously embarrassing ways. But this week was something different, and because I’m a very kind and giving chap, I thought I’d let you know why it was so bizarre.
Monday: Weirdness Rating – 3
Nothing of real note occurred on Monday, outside or work that is. Not too out of the ordinary, just lots of little silly things happening added to a general sense of “what sweet fresh hell is this?” which isn’t too strange when you work in a call centre. They don’t call it a call centre, of course, but it is. Obviously. We’re trapped in a big open plan room, sat in cubicles, answering calls. Or, a call centre if you will. Only ours is a horribly faded leaf green and beige.
Tuesday: Weirdness Rating – 7
Tuesday was completely normal, after 11:30. Before then, Life did everything it could think of to conspire against me. Firstly, my alarm didn’t go off. This isn’t at all odd, just annoying. Then without a doubt the weird highlight of the day occurred, and it can fuck right off. I have my keys looped on a Fallout 3 lanyard, because I like people to know that I’m both organised and a twat.
I left my apartment, my lanyard happily flapping outside my coat pocket. Seeing an opportunity to fuck up my life, it decided to grab hold of the door handle, lurching my keys from my pocket and swinging them around my closing door and locking them on the inside. Leaving me stood, open mouthed in my porch, unable to progress forward and unable to get back into my house. I called my door a git wizard and summoned a locksmith. 3 hours, a locksmith, and £102.86 later, I was seriously contemplating throwing in the towel and just staying home till a passing murderer came in to put me out of my misery. Luckily though, the weirdness would only get worse later in the week.
Wednesday: Weirdness Rating – 1
Nah it was fine. Ignore this one.
Thursday: Weirdness Rating – 9
It isn’t every day that you get personally insulted by the State News of a modern dictatorship. It’s even more confusing when they only half insult you, and then just send a scary giggling sound to your instagram account.
North Korea aren’t known for taking criticism well, although now I think of it I’d love to see the North Korean version of Question Time or Points of View. However, when they posted a picture on Instagram of their “new” deisel locomotive that is in no way a French loco from the early ’80s that they bought in an attempt to look like they’re modernising , I felt like it was only right to point out the likeness to the 30 year old piece of crap French chugger.
I quickly got a reply simply saying “[My] beard looks awfully like… I couldn’t say gnihihihih”. This from the official account of North Korea Today. That would be like the BBC calling you a shitstain for tweeting them that Andrew Marr looks like the FA Cup.
What made this positively perplexing and an excuse to use unnecessary alliteration is their choice of insult, or rather lack of insult. They sort of stop half way though and then typed the weirdest representation of laughing since the second Matrix movie.
Because it was North Korea, I shall not be opening my door to any hungry looking Asians for a while for fear of disappearing.
Rest of the Week: Weirdness Rating – 3
The following days were relatively okay, except for bad news about my Grandma’s health, but the oddness seemed to die down. Except for Saturday night when I was poked in the back in town by a man dressed a John Wayne Gacy asking if I had any balloons.
I’m sad to say I had no balloons. I also really hope that he wasn’t a copycat murderer, or I’ll have one weird ass anecdote to tell in the future.
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