English invented rain.

In the time-honoured tradition of whinging and whining via blogpost when life becomes exasperating, I present this.

Presumably I wouldn't even have a blog if so many darn people and various life situations weren't so massively annoying.

'Tis the Ashes cricket which vexes me today.  We all know that the English invented rain to give the Poms something to talk about.

And I would not be surprised if the 16th century Englishmen invented the rain at the exact same time they invented cricket.  How often does a rain-soaked wicket at dark and depressing Old Trafford benefit them?  Um, every single Ashes.

I don't understand why sookie lala cricketers can't play in the rain.  Why does rain stop play?  Maybe because they'll get their hair wet?  That's why I avoid rain, drizzle, mist and wet air, but I'm a namby pamby girl who cries her eyes out when her locks get unexpectedly wet.  I hate my hair getting wet.

Hates it lots.  However, if winning or losing an Ashes Test rested on my venturing out into rain, I would go out into the fucking rain and do my job.
 
I could certainly understand cricketers reluctance to play in the rain wearing white t-shirts if one were a girl.  But they are boys, and they certainly do not seem to have any issue at all with drawing international televisual attention to their nether regions, what with their endless fiddling between balls, so to speak.

Although I guess you can't begrudge the English their wet weather wins.  Inventing rain was smart, because it gives them a 50:50 chance of nailing home games.

Tea Reheater.

I am a massive tea lover.  And I am also a massive tea reheater, much to the displeasure of some of my work colleagues. (But one of these aforementioned work colleagues is still into Garfield, so somebody's not in a position to judge.)  People mock what they don't understand.  It all tastes the same, you fools.  Well maybe not, but I like my tea HOT.

Thus, it has recently popped into my little brain that I would presumably benefit from an electronic tea cup warmer, just like the one in the picture.  A cup warmer that looks like an oreo cookie.  So clever and tacky in one little biccie. Wonderful. 

If you want to buy it for me for Christmas, cyber-bot friend, then do it.  Unless you are a weirdo.  For ease of placing yourself into my classification system, I define weirdo as somebody who keeps human body parts stored in a freezer in their basement or any other room.  I'm pretty cool with everyone else.

To summarise, tea is everything that is right and good with the world contained in one aromatic hot beverage.  When I say I'm not fussy when it comes to tea, I mean to say is that I only drink Twinings.  It's just how it is. Lapsang Souchong is my current favourite.  It smells like a bushfire.  So good.  How interesting is this blog post?  So interesting.

Christmas Burglars.

It's beginning to look a lot like I really need something fascinating to happen in my life.  Something infinitely fascinating.

In lieu of something infinitely fascinating to blog about, however, I'm going to write about one of the great loves of my life, Christmas, which is infinitely fascinating to me, but maybe not to you.  But guess what?  This is my blog.  What's not to love about Christmas anyway?

I have a strong and grim foreboding feeling that a burlgar donned in gay apparel is going to break into my house this week and put up my Christmas tree.  And probably also decks the halls with bells of holly.  Sure, it's too early, but you try telling that to a burglar who is high on the festive spirit.  Sometimes they just love Christmas too much.  You would even say they glow.

And sometimes things are just out of our control so you can't stress about them, you just have to go with the flow and leave the front door open and decorations in an accessible place so they don't trash the joint.  I hope Scrooge doesn't come here.  He is a mean, bitter old man.  Or a jerk, as Charles Dickens would presumably so eloquently put it.

It would also be good if they would BYO wreath for my door, because I don't have one.

Warning: Cuteness Overload.

I did warn you.

Gravity (and Spoilers)

I ventured out today to the filmed entertainment place to see Sandra Bullock and that delectable George Clooney man in the outer space thriller, Gravity.  Might be some spoilers here - although if you haven't seen Gravity yet you need to get your shites together.

This movie is about a medical engineer and an astronaut who survive the mid-orbit destruction of their space shuttle and a return to Earth. I enjoyed this flick, but it also reminded me of why I decided to give up my career as a Hollywood movie star.  

You get to the top of your game and are so good at what you do that the only job you get offered involves sitting in a dark studio for three months breathing heavily into a fake space helmut while using your God-given Oscar winning facial expressions to make your eyes look anguished and distressed.  Poor Sandy Bullock.  

Clooney was fortunate enough to die at the start of the movie, and thus avoid having to look perma-traumatised for the duration of the movie-making process, which allowed him to return to his luxurious pad in *insert country*.

I'm pretty sure this pic is not from Gravity. 
But who cares.

In Gravity, Clooney plays a supremely confident and smooth astronaut commander; one of those men who are so annoyingly self-assured that they are just asking for a punch in the damn face.  Oops, not meant to punch people in the face or encourage such activities.  My bad then.

Despite his character’s constant sureties to the contrary, I imagine there is nothing peachy at all about being marooned in the earth’s orbit with a busted space ship.  Even if Clooney was there.

His character is on his last mission before retirement, and was entrusted with ensuring the crew didn’t plummet to their deaths, so things looked just bloody marvellous when he drifted off into the abyss. This movie is exactly why NASA does not let normal people into their space ships.  Because they ruin them with their averageness.  

Nevertheless, despite the extraordinarily bad odds and the fact that her character's not an astronaut but a medical engineer or some other job equally useless in an outer space workplace, Sandy somehow miraculously survives by space shuttlejacking an American, Russian and then a Chinese space ship.  Sounds reasonable.    

I’m pretty sure that Sandy has a few quid, so I don’t know why these powerful acting women let their directors sway them into doing gratuitous skimpy clothed shots just to satisfy the male viewers.  Having said that, the bitch has great legs, so why wouldn't you flash the universe the hot pants you're wearing under your spacesuit?

NaNoWriMo

It's NaNoWriMo time again! And I have zero good ideas.  So that's a bit of a pickle.  50,000 words of nothingness.  Can't wait to read it...

Traffic Light Plus Red Means Stop

It's been a while since I checked the ACT road rules.  I do this from time to time to make sure crazy stuff isn't going down that I should know about, like it's suddenly law to rotate anti-clockwise on a roundabout.  These types of rule changes probably happen all the time.

The last time I visited the ACT Government's heaving, bossy pdf on the laws of the road was when I was querying a ticket that I received due to illegal parking in a parking bay.  They were right so I didn't fight.  Ooh, that rhymes.  But like so many other epic poets, I am in no mood to rhyme.

Has anyone noticed the great abundance of douchebags in Canberra who think the process of stopping at a red traffic light has somehow morphed into an option, rather than a specific fucking directive?  Last weekend I nearly got wiped out at an intersection because some loser in a green Ford couldn't be bothered waiting his turn.  Fair dinkum, I am so over dickheads.

Never mind the actual road rules; the last time I checked my common sense rule book of stuff-morons-don't-know, the signal denoting a red light meant stop. Just STOP. It wasn't a guideline. It wasn't a suggestion. It meant stop your fucking car in a fully halted fashion. Has this fairly logical rule changed?

I suppose learning how to drive a car on a road without causing minor/major collateral damage and killing yourself/everyone else can be quite a challenge for Canberra's wannabe Michael Schumachers, who are blissfully unaware that they are without the flashy, curvy Red Ferrari (Red Ferrari always gets capitalised in my world), any hint of skill or talent, and that actions have consequences.

I guess I can see the ambiguities in the regulations surrounding the mysterious red traffic lights.  I mean red is fairly open to interpretation.  It's just such a wishy washy colour, isn't it?  Does it mean stop, does it mean go?  It's all so confusing.  For stupid people.

Now while I like to believe that I have my vehicular basics down pat, I still don't know who goes first in an intersection with two oncoming cars when you both want to turn right.

Dragons!

In the spirit of blogging about everything except what I had for dinner last night (pumpkin soup), here's another exciting entree to my blogpost platter.

Let's talk about dragons.  Apart from the fact that they are just flying lizards who more often that not breathe heat, fire and possibly volcanic lava, what's not to love about dragons?  Who doesn't love a mobile oven that's on the blink?

I'm personally not a fan of dragons, but that's because they usually arise in those long tedious sci-fi books involving epic journeys with rings and wizards.  Life hard's enough without going on a fictitious, suicidal mission with a bunch of hobbits and Orlando Bloom. 

The hobbits have given me a terrible headache.

Popping a dragon in your storyline seems like an easy out to me.  Oh no, how is the hero going to escape? Oh, it's okay, he has a fire-breathing dragon buddy that conveniently negates every other problem that he comes across.

I write of dragons today because I just went on one last week.  A dragon boat actually.  I was a little disappointed that my dragon boat didn't look anything like a dragon, rather an elongated canoe, but no matter.

It was a first training session for a corporate charity challenge, raising money for a breast cancer initiative called Dragons Abreast, and and it was so fun.  Dragon boating is fairly technical, and you get completely saturated with blue-green algae bloom-infused Lake Burley Griffin water, but it's all fun.  So fun. That is all for now.

So I accidently drugged myself...

Oh, birthdays. Milestone birthdays. How fun are they? So fun. I’ve just hit one. I’m not going to say which one and you’re not going to ask me. Actually I’d like to hit this birthday milestone in the face.

Your birthday is the one day of the year when you gratefully receive a card from a person professing to be your friend that includes a so-called humourous reference to how freakin’ old you are. This can go on for days and days. Such fun for everyone except the birthday man.

For my birthday this year I popped down to my local beach, that place where water and sand are magically transformed into a petri dish of potential staph infections. Oh, and I also accidently drugged myself.

I was going to be sharing the driving, but for half of the trip I would play passenger, which is often a problem because I get carsick. Not vomiting carsick, thank goodness, but awfully nauseous nonetheless. Some people have real problems in their life; this is mine.

I feel for those people I see on the side of the road throwing up, but they perhaps shouldn’t have eaten that slice of pepperoni pizza or drank that can of coke before their journey. One has to prepare when one gets carsick. Before I go on a long drive I prep myself just like a heavy weight boxer, except without all the carbs and starving and skipping and whatever. So possibly nothing like that.

I usually take Travelcalm before I depart for the open roads, which is super-duper at kicking carsickness in the bum. When I say I usually take it, I mean I generally forget a lot, which is why I don’t ingest sugar, fat,  milk or anything else that will ride my stomach like a roller coaster beforehand. I bet you’re saying to yourself, “hey idiot, why don’t you leave the Travelcalm in the glove compartment of your car?”, and to that I say, “that’s probably a good idea. Thanks!”

So on this occasion, I get to my travel buddy's house and realise I am devoid of any type of nausea killers. I wasn’t about to be nauseous on my birthday, damn it, so I went to the local drug store to purchase some of the good stuff.

Travelcalm wasn’t available, so I just grabbed some different ones. They’re all the same, aren’t they? No, no they’re not.

Did the pharmacist tell me that they are ideally ingested the night before, may cause stupidly intense drowsiness, and that it is best to stay out of strong sunlight? I don’t believe that happened at all. Given I was going to the beach that day and hanging out in the sun, that information would have been helpful.

She didn’t say any of that. She asked me if I had taken it before and I said I had taken Travelcalm. End of conversation. This little tablet was nothing like Travelcalm. The one time I don’t read the instructions for use is my bloody birthday.

You know the rest. After an hour I could barely keep my eyes open, so no driving for me. About four hours after I swallowed that thing I was practically crawling on my hands and knees at the beach, unable to walk any further or keep my eyes open because of the light. What the fuck is in those things? On the plus side, I was too drugged to feel queasy.

1812 Overture Adventures

I headed to the Australian National University’s Llewellyn Hall this afternoon for Strike Up The Band!, a harmony of pretty noises brought to me by the temporary convergence of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Military College (RMC) Band.

While orchestras and bands are not usually my piccolo - I’m more of a Bon Jovi circa 1980's type of gal - I was well impressed with their big band contraptions.

I ventured to this brassy shindig to fill the seat of my season-ticket holding mother, who was unable to make it on this occasion. There are so many rules at the symphony. There are the usual ones, like must wear clothes, no phone calls during the 1812 Overture, no getting up on stage to join the orchestra, blah, blah, blah.

But there are also big mobs of implicit rules. Non-negotiable implicit rule #1. Everyone must applaud incessantly throughout the performance, but must clap particularly gratuitously when the conductor enters stage left. And when he walks off the stage. And when he raises his hands. And when he scratches his arse. Some people need a Standing-O and a 21-gun salute just for turning up to work. Sheesh.

I do not know why this relentless applauding needs to happen, seeing as his presence and energetic hand waving seem largely symbolic. I’ll eat my trombone if the orchestra do not know their shit backwards.

Speaking of trombones, I used to play that apparatus in high school for lame music appreciation class. I guess all that appreciatin’ didn’t rub off on me, because I quite liked Atomic Kitten in their heyday. Playing the trombone is like trying to blow through the exhaust pipe of a small car while balancing it on your thigh.

But my sister told me she remembers my home practice sessions very, very well so I must have been quite marvellous at it. All I remember is being the last person to pick an instrument for the school term and spending the whole class every week trying to find new places to put all the spittle.

My favourite bit of today's performance came with the 1812 Overture, with a gigantic cannon firing blanks into the crowd. It was incredible. At least it would have been had it happened. In reality, they engaged the services of a cannon sound machine. How cool is that?  Overall, I did not fall asleep even once, and that is impressive.

#annoyingasfek

What’s up with the popularity of Instagram?  I understand that people want to flaunt pictures of their cat's poo or their tasty spaghetti bolognese dinner to the world; really I do.  I adore cat poo and I’ve eaten food on at least one occasion.  But what’s with the hashtags?  This is exactly the type of thing that's wrong with the Western world.  Not the main thing wrong with the West – that’s undoubtedly the Kardashian clan – but one more fucking thing.

Excessive, pompous, narcissism disguised as sarcasm hashtagging is fucking annoying.  In fact it's so fucking annoying it's #fuckingannoying.  I get it - people are trying to be clever.  And sometimes it is, but mostly it's not.  Why do people hashtag their cat so other users can see their picture of a #cutecat amongst millions of other #cutecats? I don't know either, friend, I just don't know.

If you want to keep a log of your lives, write a sentence about it.  A beautifully constructed sentence conveys more meaning and evokes more memories than a single word ever could.  That's what me thinks anyways.  Here's why I hate on hashtags.

I've been a prolific writer since the day I was borned.  It was a bit difficult to lift a pen in those first few hours, but where there's a will there's a Middleton, and all that.  Sentences are my friend.  We is like best buds.

And I just think if you have time to put twenty hashtags on a photo to describe what you think other people are too fucking stupid to see for themselves, then you have time to construct a bewitching, lingering sentence.  I love words as well, but generally without hashtags interrupting my flow, man.  I find that where there are sentences on Instagram, there are no spaces between the words.  This shit is messing with my head.

The hashtag craze was presumably invented by someone who didn’t learn how to construct a sentence in school and still can't figure it out.  Maybe it's just my personal preference, but I don't want to live in a dumbed down world of hashtags. 

Mobile phone drone

I had a conversation with a youth today, although I'm not very savvy with ages so Bob (not her real name) could have been anywhere between the ages of 8 to 22. The youth tend to identify themselves to me by being despairingly naive and idealistic about the fate of the world, usually self righteous, often entitled, and just overwhelmingly youthful, which is irritating.

I too cared about the fortunes of the world until I was approximately 23 years old. I have diaries and notebooks full of my political rantings and unbridled philosophising. I think I even believed in the prospect of world peace at some point. Aww, sah cute. At any rate, world peace is one of those things that sounds good in principle but is really not healthy for the economy.

Our conversation revolved around technology and how it needed to be kept up with, apparently. Bob is about to buy some new mobile telephone, called the iPhone something, and it’s going to cost Bob a fortune but Bob doesn’t care because Bob has to have it. I queried what was wrong with her current phone. Nothing was wrong with Bob’s current phone, even though she only bought it in April. But it’s not the latest version and it has to be the latest version or Bob’s head will spin on its axis and explode in humiliation and indignity.

I just don’t understand. I mean, what a fucking waste of money. Why do I even care? It’s none of my business how stupid people squander their wealth. My goodness, technology seems to be a bit of an addiction; like heroine or McDonald’s chicken nuggets.  So I referenced my hankering for the days when we didn’t have smart phones and this was met with a blank confused stare. I suppose Bob can’t even fathom a world without them. 

Sprinter from winter

I know that the weather was created by God to give boring people something to talk about, but I got more to say about that crazy little natural pheomenon. I didn’t get no break from wretched Canberra this winter, which I’m still dirty about.

All my work associates (I think ‘associates’ makes my line of work sound more interesting and meaningful) took the prime leave slots – which is anywhere from June to late July when Canberra is at its most frosty – so I had to hang around in the doom and gloom that is the national capital at that time of year.

So this week I’m booking some leave, which is of no interest to anyone but of enormous significance to me. For one month next June/July. Yes. I know I'll feel better when I have a get out of jail card. June 2014 is absolutely eons away, but I will be blimey happy that I gave myself an escape from the frostiness before all the other clowns at work book in.

I have a vague idea of where I want to go - back to the Mother Country, maybe - and an array of people to join in the fun - how hard is it to convince people to leave Canberra in winter? - but that is all inconsequential detail at this stage. What I do know is that if I have to spend another winter here I will need to be consigned to a mental health facility.

Apple Fools

Ah apples. They are so great, aren't they? I love apples.  If they and bananas and mangoes ever disappeared because of some post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario that only affects specific yellow and red and orange coloured fruit, I would be massively screwed because I just don't care for any other type of edible flowering plant except those ones.

So it's most fortuitous that I love pretty much every vegetable that's ever been born, except the ones that I loathe, most notably brussel sprouts. I mean, really.

Brussel sprouts are a member of the cabbage family, which certainly explains why they are so disgusting.  Worst family genes ever.  Anyway, back to apples.

I ate a royal gala for my post-lunch repast today.  It was really delicious and crunchy, except there were two stickers on my apple, and I don't really approve of my fruit being used as a platform for insidious promotion from fruit growers.

Individual stickers on apples are just annoying, because I just don't care where they come from and the sign above the fruit in the shop tells me what specific fruit I am purchasing.  Plus I have a brain and may be able to detect all by myself when a banana has accidently or deliberately been tossed into the royal galas.

Through the story of Adam and Eve, apples have become the symbol of knowledge, immortality, temptation and rampant advertising.  When Eve took the apple off the Forbidden Tree she probably had to peel off a fucking promotional sticker. I think I'm going to create tiny oval stickers of my face and put them all over Canberra.  Just because.

Stomp A Little

Still awake because of a head cold, and other crap that's going round and round in my head.  Shut up brain. Go to sleep.  Went to see the STOMP tonight in Canberra. Gosh they are good at what they do.

Apparently I'm one of the few people in the world who claim to never have seen it. STOMP is a blend of tap, contemporary dance, theatre, comedy performed by people who have big mobs of rhythm using pretty much any household items, including brooms, dustpans, shopping trolleys, newspapers, cigarette lighters, garbage bins, plastic bags, pipes, pots and pans, rubber tyres, coughing, clapping, finger clicking and literally the kitchen sink.

The performance was super slick but it was also gritty. Most of the performers aren't the polished tapdog-type of athlete, but more the Kingswood County-type of drinker.  It was also witty, and they made (but a few) mistakes, which just added to the attraction. If you create an environment where the audience perceives the performers as capable of self-deprication, watching them make mistakes reminds you how talented they are.

It's best not to go to these things with any tinge of a headache, because it won't end well for you.  A few things I gleaned from the performance. I now know why shopping trolleys never work; because the Stompers have had their hands on them.  Might write more when I feel better, which is not right now.

Whale Calling

Last weekend I headed down to my local awesome beach.  Sure, it's about a two-hour commute from my home, but it's worth it because there's sun and sea and sand and shells and many other things that start with the letter S.

Did the father's day thing with the father and the family and then went to a lookout to view beach things from up there.  It's always a good day for up.  It's coming into whale commuting season when the bus-sized mammals swim past the east coast of Australia to cooler waters, but I didn't expect to see any as I always seem to miss them.

But there were four of them! Four! Four adult Southern Right Whales! I was beside myself.  So exciting.  Watched them for ages as they tried to cool themselves down by lolling around and then foolishly drove back to Canberra because I have a job or whatever.  Now that it's almost whale season, I must follow through with my new obsession, which is whale stalking. Bermagui next I think. Yes.

The History of August

It's the end of August, which means SUMMER IS ON THE WAY! This is the best news I've ever heard today.  Best news in the history of ever. Do you know the history of August?  Do you? You should learn.  Let me teach you.  All of this is practically completely true.

It all started with Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire.  It was a terrible moniker, but he didn't care because he was emperor, which enabled him to punish his parents severely for this aberration. 

It's hard to keep track of all the monikers of Augustus, because he changed his name more times than Facebook would ever have allowed.  But Augustus must have been his fave because the month of 'Sextilis' was renamed August in his honour in 8 BC, after he picked this particular month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs in his rise to power, including the conquest of Egypt and when he killed Lily and James Potter. 


Poor Augustus didn't get a salad
named after him. But he got the month 
of August, so he no complain.

Similar to the Obama Messiah and Lord Voldermort, Augustus held a collection of powers that were granted to him for life by the Senate, including those of tribune of the plebs and censor, and the intellectual property rights for use of the Killing Curse as a threat.

His magical powers stemmed from financial success, ability to apparate out of awkward press conferences, resources gained in conquest, the building of relationships with dodgy, decrepit nation states throughout the Empire, the loyalty of many military soldiers and veterans, and the respect of the muggles, believe it or not.



Although the most powerful individual in the Roman Empire, Augustus wished to embody the spirit of the average muggle's virtues and norms, so he tried to relate to them and pretended to connect with their pathetic little concerns.

He did this by throwing good money after bad, pretending to cut back on lavish excess and banning Twitter tweets that use the wrong version of there/their/they’re and you’re/your.  He didn't even have to pretend about the last thing - he hated it for real.    

In 28 BC, in an attempt to appear frugal and modest and ghetto, he generously decided to melt down 80 silver statues erected in his likeness that he had built because he was "born this way" and everyone needed to know it. And in 29 BC, Augustus paid 400 sesterces each to 250,000 citizens, turned bad romans into Horcruxes and raised the debt ceiling so he could keep buying spears and whores whilst looking like the savvy shopper.



The good news is that Augustus eventually died. The bad news is that his reign laid the foundations of a regime that lasted for nearly fifteen hundred years. And this is why they have three to four-year terms in democratic nations.

Liberté conditionnelle - fancy talk for parole

Liberté conditionnelle.  It's French for parole.  Everything in the world sounds more fancy when you speak it in French with a bad French accent.  Which is strange, because the French are muchos bastards in general.  I know; I've met at least 12 of them.

Speaking of parole - such a coinkydink - I’ve always thought an efficient way for the Government to generate some extra revenue for their kitty would be through the installation of grandstand seating at police stations and charge non-criminals for the privilege of watching life’s shitheads report for parole.  I’d watch the heck out of that.

And we could clap and woop woop as criminals are led down to the gallows or whatever in their chains and be forced to watch a live feed of Big Brother for three hours and eat a plate of peanut butter-encrusted brussell sprouts.  Gross.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for you, then there’s the uniforms. Oh wait. I’m pretty sure no-one on the earth has ever shown any interest in men in police uniform, so that’s just not relevant.

In reality, no criminal activity of any sort will happen on the day you have your tickets and you will just have to watch police officers do boring paperwork and talk over-the-counter to little old ladies. Sort of like requesting to attend swimming in the Olympics lottery and getting tickets to the diving.

They could have icecream sellers and everything. But not the ones who block your view for ages during important bits just so some moron can change their mind 18 times about whether to purchase a cornetto or that other one that is exactly the same fucking thing as a cornetto but has a different name. And then we get marzipan to throw at the prisoners. Such fun.

So I’ve recently been walking home via my local police station. There is a good reason for this. I’m not actually on parole anymore, so that’s not the reason. I have recently moved to an apartment and the copshop is on my walking route. When I walk past in the afternoon there are always losers sitting waiting to sign in for parole. I know they are on parole because they have losers on parole written all over them.

My concern is that they will be so bored stiff waiting in the backlog of deadbeats that they will notice some blonde chick walking past and decide to follow her for some sinister purpose. I'm assuming none of them are murderers but you just never know; especially if you live in Victoria.

Footwear Interchanger

And today's post will be about shoes.  Ooh, should be exciting.  Brace yourself.

When one walks to work, as this one does, it requires the wearing of runners, sneakers, walking foot attire.  I also wear such footwear when I leave my building for lunch and such.  I don't understand why women wear heels when they go out onto the cobblestones in their lunchbreak.  They are either suicidal or moronic.  Little from column A... 

Cute. But probably not ideal for a rowing machine.


A very good reason to wear runners when leaving any building ever is that you are best placed to outrun a marauding lion if it escapes from the zoo, which is just up the road from my workplace.  Reliable and trustworthy statistics show that women in Africa who wear high heels do not escape from lions.

At my workplace, the women who choose to wear heels when walking around outside are ironically the ones who don't know how to walk in high heels and end up walking like the first man on the moon.  Practice makes perfect unless you're a moron in heels.

In more boring news, I like to wear heels or ballet flats during the day, the latter specifically if I feel like breaking into some spontaneous pointe work.  I have about ten pairs of shoes in a box under my desk at work.  There are good reasons for this.  This first reason is that I just like change.  Change is good.  Change is as good as a holiday to a really shitty holiday destination like Bali.  The only time change isn't good is when summer turns into that princess bitchface, winter.

Hopefully I'll find something more interesting to blog about forthwith.

The Bubble Addiction

Addictions.  No-one wants them and certainly no-one wants to admit to them - least of all on a social networking site. Well, I have an addiction.  So there.  It can easily take over my life, and I can't function adequately without playing it at least once a day.

When I start bingeing, it alters the chemical makeup in my brain, and I can't stop without some serious intervention, like starvation, dehydration or a desperate need to go to the loo.  My problem is not booze, cigarettes, pornog, drugs, Wills and Kate fanaticism, pokies, shopping or exercise.  It is a recurring compulsion to play the bubbles game. 

I don't want to encourage others into my web of shame and illicitness, but here is the link to this massive waste of time. It's a dark, murky world, where bright little round balls prey on the vulnerable.   A few things you needs to know before entering the land of bubbles.  Don't let them build up, because they just keep coming at you, like rioting Syrians.  And then they'll shoot you in the head.

I always try to pop the red ones first. I don’t have a justifiable reason for this; perhaps it is because I'm anti-communist and wish them to be eradicated from the planet.  And I always seem to let the baby blue ones slide, as if they were harmless little puffy clouds that wouldn’t dream of messing with my batting average.  The yellow ones are rather insignificant to me; much like Kim Kardashian is to the human race.

I always feel a tad guilty when I’m playing my bubbles, as if I am denying myself my true purpose in life; like plotting a new peace roadmap for the Middle East, or even more meaningful tasks, like eradicating that which is useless and pointless from my wardrobe.  I guess what is most troubling about my indulgent, depraved pastime is my belief that it's worthy of a blog post.

Need a Shrink, much?

Apart from being super cathartic, a good thing about having a blog is that you can chart your progress on a certain project.  This is my current project.  I know some people have real problems, but this is one of mine.

As the title of this post very wittily suggests, I have a psychological problem.  And I want to try and fix it.  I'm not happy with various elements of my life at the moment; it's all things I can change, I think, but stuff takes time.  One of the key shit things in my life is that I can't escape winter this year, because everyone else at work got their leave in before me. 

I imagine that sounds loopy and just a bit sooky to people who just don't prefer the cooler climes, but winter casts a really dark shadow over me that scares me a bit to be honest.  I start to dread the onset of winter from about February, a good two months before we get the cooler temperatures.  I don't think it's actually about winter at all, it's just the time my brain decides to be more depressed and anxious than it usually is. 

Having said that, I seem to connect the cold weather to how I think and feel.  I think perhaps somewhere, somehow my brain has managed to stuff up my synapses and reset everything to darkness; there is no light.  It's fucking horrible. 

I'm aware it's probably referred pain from something else going on in my little noggin, but I mostly like to live in denial of these things because it makes my life easier.  Probably time to change that, given that it comes between me and happiness.  Fortunately there are strategies you can learn to control this, and it's probably time I learnt them.

At this stage, the thought of even another two more winters in Canberra is something I can't mentally grasp.  Leaving is something that is always in the back of my mind, but how is running away a solution?  My brain is currently set to winter - gloomy, cloudy, depressing.  Someone needs to talk to a shrink.  I'm really going to try and manage the shit out of this in 2013.  Yes. 

Warning: This is about defecting tyres.

Got to my car in my work carpark the other day to find a plastic-covered notice from my local government, alerting me to the fact that my front left tyre was defecting.  I found this all very exciting because how often do your car tyres defect?  One minute you're doing donuts in morning peak hour traffic - which should have been my first red flag - the next minute you find out your tyres actually work for the KGB.

In hindsight, I should have known there was dissent in the ranks when I caught my car engaging in what I suspected was counter-counterintelligence gathering.  This is almost just like the Petrov Affair.

And then I questioned the likelihood of my little car being caught up in an dramatic international spy incident and realised they probably meant my tyre was defective.  It must be from all those left turns I make, and indeed all those anti-clockwise burnouts I do on the Tuggeranong Parkway in Canberra at 2am with my street racing pals.  Yep, that's me.  Can't sleep. You have your hot chocolate, I have my night hobbies.

Our rubber can fly. Or something.

So, fair call, they want my car to be up to scratch.  Can't argue with that logic.  So I contacted a tyre place to organise some new front-end Goodyears.  If they are good enough for blimps then they are good enough for my car.

And here's a practical tip: it's probably best to not wear a pale pink winter coat when visiting the mechanic.  They see you coming.  Oh, here comes Barbie in her little red corolla car; let's rip her off.  She's probably so daft that she'll drive up the ramp on the street out the front that's reserved specifically for cars that are not hers. Yep.

So once these folk attach my new tyres and I'm paying the bill, they advise me they don't do inspections anymore.  That would have been really useful information when I booked and asked them if they did inspections. 

So a few days later I put my car into the same dealership, except one closer to my work, for a roadworthy inspection.  My car is so sick of being judged and criticised but we passed with flying colours and they told me about some things I needed to watch for in the future, which is exactly what I expect from my car servicer.  I find it's always ideal if the people who service your car alert you to any defects before your local government sees them.

Can it be that I have found my dream mechanic? One who isn't going to make out my car has a whole bunch of fake illnesses just to drain my bank balance or accuse me of Car Munchausen syndrome by Proxy?  Kmart Tyre and Auto in Phillip, Canberra.  I rate them.

And this journey isn't over yet, because that would be entirely unbureaucratic.  Before me and the little red four-wheeled fella are roadworthy again we must cut through more red tape and turn up to the house of condemned souls - the A.C.T. Government Shopfront - with our paperwork and beg for a gigantic novelty cardboard tick of approval from our Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher.  She works there, right?  She probably should occasionally.

Calculators - fast relief from adding shit

I’ve been reading up about internet usage in North Korea. We all have our hobbies). I’m thinking of starting a Facebook page called 'Kimmy John-un’s TicToc addiction is ruining people's lives and communism doesn't help either', and I wanted to know whether my disparaging remarks regarding the little sociopathic nutjob would put my life at risk.  Turns out it very possibly could.

According to Wikipedia, which can occasionally be more trustworthy that you think, hardly any communists in North Korea have access to Google but the ones who do spend their days surfing the net are high level government officials.  Henchmen.  And I don't want to be number 8,098 on their torture machine bucket list.

Plus, randomly, do they even have calculators in North Korea? Kimmy J-u is screwed up enough to ban the kiddies from using a contraption to solve math shit.  If Johnny has 6 apples and Susie has 3 apples then they're probably going to jail for stealing from the state-owned orchard anyway.

Would anyone like to know the story of the history of calculators?  I see someone at the back has their hand up.  Here we go then.  Once upon a time, someone invented a calculator.  The End.  This is a blog; I don't got no time for the history of a device that solves basic and complex math shit, friends.

Although I imagine the person who first operated such a machine was a bit like me - hated math.  Lots. When faced with a math equation of considerable proportion, or just an easy one, his brain likely threw up a gigantic anti-algebratic wall, as if to protect itself from the horrors of the apocalyptic nightmare that is any arithmetic problem that has the alphabet in it.  Because that's what menial silver-collar calculators are for.  Calculators live for this shit. 

Soarin' Over Canberra

This time last year I was gearing up to head over to 'sunny side up with extra cheese and a sprinkling of hurricane activity' Florida, so that's a bit depressing.  This time this year I'm gearing up to spend a long cold winter in icy Canberra, the most northern point of Antarctica. 

Soarin' is like crack.

Oh look, I'm writing about weather again.  Did you know that weather is a natural phenomenom created by God to give boring people something to talk about it?  Well this post is fun.  

One of the most entertaining parts of my trip to Orlando last year was the Soarin' Over California ride at DisneyWorld.  I have no idea why I am attracted to Disney, what with its relentlessly upbeat world and endless kilometres of sticky children.  It's a big mystery, for sure.

I went on Soarin' about 14 times, because 13 times is just not enough times.  Soarin' is a simulated attraction that raises you fairly high above the ground via a mechical lift system and takes you on a hang gliding tour around California.  It is spectacular.



It's also 4D, so you smell the orange blossoms of Napa Valley, the evergreens over the mountains, the redwoods, and the sea breeze at Malibu and Monterey, and you feel the jolting vibrations of the fireworks as you end up on Main Street, Disneyland at Christmas time.

And each time you land, your thongs are waiting for you in the exact place you left them, bizarrely enough, which I found endlessly hilarious for some inexplicable reason.  

Which all makes me think - surely we could look into a Canberra version of this thrilling ride.  For example, we could start at Tuggeranong, where an icy ill wind blows off the snowy mountains and gives you a mild case of severe frostbite, then soar on up the backstreets to Chisholm, the Malibu of my hometown, where simulated beer cans are thrown at your head and you whiff the faintest aroma of crown lager and sick. 

Then we head over to Mugga Lane, where you catch the gentle aroma of roadkill and garbage, and then soar over toward Lake Burley Griffin, and suffer mildly severish allergies as pollen dust is blown in your face before the pungent stench of blue-green algae fills your nostrils.  Just like Disney. 



More crack. I just don't need to go into
Disney's candy stores, said me never.



 

Big Mobs of Randomness.

Two things got my goat today.  A supreme jerk on a mobile phone and writer's block.  So my brain's now gone offline and random.  Best to just let it go.

Tackling issue number one.  Flashback to beautiful Waikiki - Summer 2012.  Mobile phones completely ruin everything.  Lively dinner conversations, the patience of shops assistants, lunchtime walks in the sun, my beach ambience. Ruined. By a man with a loud voice and a Samsung. It lasted five minutes, but five minutes too long.  I closed my eyes and swore under my breath.

As he put it down on his towel, I did a dramatic commando roll over to his spot, picked up his precious phone, and hurled it into the ocean, where I heard it pop into the water with a little splash. I strolled back to my spot with a hint of a smile and sat back down to enjoy the sunshine.  Unfortunately when I opened my eyes he was making a new call.  Daydreaming: doesn't get you thrown in the clink.

Tackling issue number two.  Fucking writer's block.  She was laying on the lush grass behind the rusting suspension bridge that was built in the 20s, and should have been torn down in the 30s. Some people write novels - good and bad - in the 24 hours that is their day. She wondered how prolific writers manage their time, their ideas, their energy and their motivation.

Do they ever sit at their laptop, fingers poised over the keys, waiting for the next action of their hero or heroine to emerge in their mind, only to discover that the character is not a real tangible thing they can observe and write about? I doubt it. Real writers have a game plan.

Skank-free Royal Ascot

It's that time of the year when Britain's royals emerge from their medieval castle fortresses in their coordinated pastel shoes and frocks and their hideous Philip Treacy hat creations and jump into their gilded carriages to make one's way into the royal enclosure at the enormously posh and pretentious Royal Ascot horse racing meeting thingy in Berkshire, England.  It doesn't get much snootier than Royal Ascot.

Don't get me wrong - I love the Queen.  I think she's an amazing human being, plus she reminds me very much of my late grandmother in the looks department. It's all the associated privileged hangers-on that are of great annoyance.

No fascinators allowed. This is much
more appropriate.

While one imagines that one wouldn't survive for long without sticking a hot poker in one's eyeball in the company of all those royally-connected twats who have an exalted sense of their own importance, one very much approves of the Royal Ascot dress code, which diplomatically and rather firmly advises that no skanks are allowed.

Some milliner/socialite was thrown out for the crime of skankiness the other day.  The evicted one, presumably a commoner from somewhere in Essex, says she will seek compensation through legal action, init.  Alrightee then, skanky whorebag.

I think the whole entire universe should have to abide by the Royal Ascot dress code, which dictates that young female things must adhere to a 'modest length' for dresess and skirts, midriffs must be covered and fascinators are no longer permitted, I assume because the majority of them are trashy and vulgar.

So that's half of the female population in their mid-20s completely banned.  Big mobs of ticks of approval for all those rules.  What's not to love about Royal Ascot?

Fitness - Plateaus, Walls & Moveable Partitions

New post - click. I'm the Daniel Day-Lewis of method writing.

One seems to have plateaued in one's quest for a lofty fitness goal.  Gosh, that word plateaued is rather vowel greedy, isn't it?  Indulge me while I momentarily become one of those pretentious little twats (Age journalists) who define words for their five readers.  Thanks pretentious twats, but I have a dictionary and half a brain.  One definition of plateau coming up:

In geology and earth science, a plateau (/pləˈtoʊ/ or /ˈplætoʊ/; plural plateaus or rarely plateaux) is an area of highland, usually consisting of relatively flat terrain.  Plateaus can be formed by a number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma, extrusion of lava, and erosion by water and glaciers.

Hold up, I dont think that's the plateau I'm looking for; pretty sure I'm reading from the wrong playbook.  Humans haven't secreted lava since 2005.  That's the last time I rely on the crusty old Encyclopedia Britannica.  Pages falling out everywhere.  But I just don't know where else I could find such an extensive range of information resources... Someone needs to invent something to keep all those things in the same place.

I'm turning a certain age this year.  Let's just call it somewhere between two and fifty-eight.  And I've decided that I must be superbly fit and healthy when doomsday hits on 4 October.  It was all going along swimmingly until a few weeks ago when I hit a wall. 

Hello wall, you massive jerk.  I hate walls.  They are so annoying and immovable.  Unless you have a wreaking ball attached to your forehead it's gotta be mind over matter, baby.  So, in order to rid myself of this pesky fictitious solid vertical structure I shall deem it a movable partition and go from there.

This quote might help.  I love a good quote.  Also, trying harder might help.

Just say no to snow.

I've said it before and I imagine I'll bang on about it many times in the future - if I wanted to live in a place where the temperature regularly drops below zero for a bloody long period of time and it can't even be bothered to snow then I'd move to Antarctica.  Minus 3 degrees celsius and no snow?  Piss off. 

Shit just got real.  Tomorrow is the start of the ski season in my country, or at my local snowy mountains, or maybe someone just made that up.  I dont know.  I don't much care, because I don't do snow.  Snow is super pretty, but it's also super cold, and that just doesn't work for me.

Flashback Time.  *cue that zigzaggy pattern they show on Days of Our Lives when Hope has a flashback and laments ever meeting that Bo Brady, what with his cheesy bad boy one liners*  

I was first introduced to snow as a highschooler, and my foremost memory is of us all getting caught in a howling blizzard (as opposed to the calm and serene type of blizzards you usually get) and of me falling into a snow ditch with one ski wrapped around my neck.  That was some good times for sure.  I'm usually more outdoorsy, but snow drives a massive ice-cold wedge between me and nature.

I'm thinking about driving down the alpine way this year and picketing the ski fields.  Say no to snow, say no to snow!  Snow has to go!  Go home snow, go home snow!  The summer, united, will never be defeated!  Snow kills baby ducks!  And stuff like that. No-one ever pickets summer, because everyone likes a bit of warm weather.  Ask everyone.

Snowboarders, I like. I'm okay with snowboarders.  And lots of skiers I have also found to be decent folk, despite their horribly soggy hobby and their endless conversation icebreakers (boom, boom) regarding powder runs and other tedious snow-type lingo.

But over the years I have learnt that the more some people bang on about how great snow is, the more likely they are merely rich, pretentious twats who ride up and down chair lifts by day and toast each other over Bordeaux in their chateau over an open fire by night with a skewer stuck firmly up their marshmellows.

Plush Fluffy Toys Lie

A realistic Great White soft toy

Plush fluffy toys of the cutesy native Australian creature nature are simply a part of a monumental strategy to lure foreign alien people from millions of miles away to come and stare in amazeballs at a curvy, archy bridge in Sydneytown and a giant red rock in the middle of nowhere (it's a big mystery why no-one has asked me to write Australian tourism brochure material).

But plush fluffy toys are big fat liars.  When did you last see a real life koala bear that wore thongs (flip flops if you are of Americana origin), carried a stubby, wore a corked hat or didn't have gigantic protruding claws of death?

And koalas don't smile.  They don't want to be in cute photos cuddling you.    They hate you.  They hate all humans.  They don't need you.  They don't want you around.  Because they're koalas.  Not dogs; koalas.  Wild animals.  Got it?

There is nothing realistic about fluffy toys.  I would like to see stuffed toys that epitomise their country of origin. For example, a toy Great White should be covered in sharky shark slime and have bloodied teeth and terrifying eyes, rather than those comical black and white velcro eyes you can purchase in a pack of ten at Spotlight.

Hunstmenphobia

Dearest e-Diary,

I've just murdered a huntsman and now I hate myself. I just wanted to take the poor little fella outside, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Stupid arachnophobia (huntsmen specific) is a psychological brick wall. My sister advised me to get phobia counselling for the sake of all my future eight-legged victims. That may convince me to go.  Nothing else will.  The problem is that systemic desnsitisation involves touching a spider.

And to think I could become a psychologist after a few more years training. Who wouldn't want me as their counsellor?

Small, Purple Pail List

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Anybody? That particular utterance has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but sometimes you just have to go with the random and often unstable thought processes that explode in your brain during the writing of blog posts to hit blog post gold.  I've never actually encountered any blog post gold on these here e-pages, but there's always a first time. 

Now, who puts things in buckets?  Like, who has a bucket list?  I don't.  Bucket lists are all the rage though - or fully sick, as Shakespeare no doubt would have phrased it - so I'm going to do one.  Bucket lists used to be called fun goals, but apparently that was too boring a title for a movie blockbuster, so they decided to go with a plastic household object that is used mainly to carry mops or sometimes other things. 

I'm sure other people have other purposes for buckets but I don't know what they are.  I'm not a bucketologist.  Plus I hate to meddle in things that are none of my business.  Actually I do like to do that a fair bit, but I don't really care about the daily vicissitudes of buckets.

I've never been much of a goal settee.  I feel like if I put lots of lofty, impossible but fun and aspirational-type things into a metal-handled plastic container then my life from here on will just be full of big mobs of disappointment.  So I'm writing a small purple pail list; it's like a bucket list but a pail is heaps smaller than a bucket, thus more achievable.  Plus it's purple, which happens to be my fave colour, so there's that.  Makes sense, no? 


For example, climbing Mount Everest turns into climbing my local Mount Taylor, which I've done about five billion times, so I can tick that one off.  How would one ever climb Mount Everest?  What do I look like, a friggin' sherpa?  Bear Grylls barely did it and he is basically a wild animal. 

Looking for more things as we speak to put into my purple container.



A pouting yellow bucket.
You work it, girlfriend.



Why I need to move to Queensland.

I'm not even joking anymore. I want to move somewhere warm.  I need it.  Warm weather makes me happy. Cold weather does the opposite.  I don't need the beach; I just need the warmth.


Canberra in winter: Nope.

Queensland in winter: Yep.



Furious. But I self-censure.

Been thinking about this all day.  Absolutely furious over it.  When I was at uni I wrote a blogpost about how western guilt leads to western tolerance which leads to Islamic multiculturalism which leads to muslims embedding their melodrama, violence and seemingly inability to behave rationally in the western world.

It was about how hundreds of years of middle eastern tribal violence has come right to your front door.  And that islamic multiculturalism equals worst idea ever.  And how there should be no immigration policy with countries that self-identify as muslim. 

That's a snapshot, but I'm not posting the rest.  I'm self-censuring, which is exactly what western governments want me to do over this issue.  

Rivers of Golden Cars

I'm currently housesitting for a work colleague, looking after a house - funnily enough - a pretty garden and a friendly, fuss-free, fancy-free pussy cat.  I'm living in an area that I don't know very well, but I quite like that, as it's like going on a summer holiday, except without all that pesky sunshine, sandy beaches, warm ocean water and laidback lifestyle.  Who the hell wants to go on a summer holiday anyway.  Only crazy people pull that shit.

In the past few months I have increased my fitness level to the point that I'm just supremely fit and am merely waiting around now for my callup to the Australian Olympic Track and Field team.  Maybe the governing body of sports people send form letters.  Should I be waiting by the mailbox? 

No-one really understands the daily vicissitudes of being an Olympic athlete, except us Olympic athletes.  Don't be envious; coveting is unattractive.  I'm even working out right now; my index fingers are among the fittest in my street.  Word.


All this fitness and et cetera et cetera means that I must run almost every day.  I've been treading the mill, riding the pushbike, and row, row, rowing the rowing machine at the gym on my cardio days, but I don't like walls, man, I need the open space.

So I have been staking out new running tracks, in so much as you can do that without your new temporary neighbours getting suspicious of strangers walking through their backyard at twilight looking for shortcuts.  I just don't understand why anyone would find that weird at all.

So today I went for a little wander and ended up fairly quickly up a mountain.  It's always a good day for up.  It was twilight by the time I got to the top and the view was spectacular.  It's only a little hill, but it's angle and position are perfectly situated to admire a wide section of Canberra. 

I sat and watched the cars during peak hour, which looked like the streets were rivers of golden lava peaking out through Canberra's many tree-lined thoroughfares.  As far as peak hour holding any allure, this was definitely it.



This is actual lava.  Any resemblance to gold cars is purely coincidental.

 

Feral Boojay & bogan-breeding

I'm feeling massively lazypants, but I want to whinge a bit about my city, Canberra, so this post has been tweaked, rehashed and recycled from last year to become the writing masterblogpost you see before you.  Alas, not a lot has changed since last year.

Living in Canberra and working in the public service is just bollocks at this time of the year. Speaking of balls, this place is cold enough to freeze them off a brass monkey right now.  Canberra is getting it's arctic monkey on.

As if that wasn’t enough horrible, we may as well rename my town Boojayberra for a couple of days and cut out any confusion. 

When it comes down to it, the federal budget is all about a small group of people who move massive amounts of money around an imaginery monopoly-type board while the rest of us go to work and hope they don't send us directly to jail or give us an old boot to play with.

I unfortunately know at least half a dozen people who get all excited by the associated budgetary figures and statistics of this system of commerce, and they're not even paid to be enthusiastic about the nuts and bolts, or faux interested at the other end of the public sector spectrum.  One of them works in advertising.  It's really not right.

I find their overeagerness terribly tragic and deeply disturbing, and it also means that no-one wants to talk to me right now about more pertinent matters, like what's happening in the Daily Mail.  I love the Daily Mail.  Pure British tabloid trashiness.

I know not to watch commercial news stations EVER. I know not to do this. And this is why.  Why is a single mother with no income and five children under the age of five by five different fathers considered a ‘victim of the economy’, rather than what she really is, which is a completely irresponsible skank?  Why is she considered disadvantaged, and why does the Gillard Government support people like this with a sugar hit?  Well, skank, Wayne Swan says no more baby bonuses for you.

If you can't afford to have children then you probably shouldn't be having children. Is this really rocket science?  It shouldn't be an entitlement; it should be means-tested, and not only financially. While I admit that would be a win for the nanny state, it would also be a huge triumph for the rest of the community.  In reality, the only people who worry about whether they can afford children are the people who can afford to have children.