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.