Your helpful Westfield updates – Voting and SANTA-20

Is there anything that screams western democratic values and ideals more than an election polling station in a Westfield shopping centre.

Yep, there's been a polling booth in Westfield Woden in Canberra. The boffins who are the boss of all things elections have obviously decided that the best way to bring liberty, equality and justice to the populace (and make them vote RIGHT NOW for the local election and circumvent COVID-19 germs) was to take the voting to the people - deep in the heart of Big W territory.

And mere steps away from the symbolic centre, the heart of Westfield, the holy grail, the iconic statue representing humanity’s march forward towards greater understanding and compassion towards overheads and rectangular plastic cards used by financial institutions – the pay parking station. 

Read the commemorative plaque if you don't believe me; it's next to the 'Insert ticket here' slot.

The polling booth stands in the shopfront that was previously tenanted by Ishka, a chichi Australian company that claims to have a "deep respect for village communities” and sells “ethically sourced furniture”. 

No wood was harmed in the manufacturing process of the furniture, except for the trees from a village community that were chopped down and therefore died at the hands of a chainsaw or some other type of tree-killing machinery just so you could have a coffee table. 

Indeed, nothing says respect for mother earth more than a shopfront in a Westfield, whose global assets are in the range of AUD$63 billion.

At the polling booth store, you have to hand sanitise - a la all COVID-era, COVIDSafe entry points - and then state that you’re not a robot to an official who has had quite a long shift already thankyou voters and ironically resembles a robot, but then it’s all electronic smooth sailing baby and it takes about three seconds and you can do it while you’re going about your other life business so I approve. Next they’ll have a sausage sizzle in the food court. Someone please make that happen. 

Another thing happening at Westfield this year is Santa Claus. I mean, he happens every year, but SANTA-20 will be a little different.

I’ve always wondered how happy Santa really is at Christmas at Westfield, with children crawling all over his jolly rotund belly and screaming into his ear drums. There’s got to be an easier way to earn a gingerbread man crust, he probably thinks every damn year. I get the feeling he’d rather be sitting on a tree stump in a Lapland forest surrounded by reindeer shit.  

Well, this year, Santa doesn’t have to handle the children. No children allowed near Santa spreading their screaming, shouting or pathogens. No sitting on laps. There will be no lapland this year. It’s a socially distanced Santa Claus.

Families or individuals have to sit away from Santa, separated by props of elves and oversized candy canes and presumably other Christmas related things like snow covered hills, a ski resort, a forest of trees, and a vast subarctic wilderness if Santa has any say in it. Westfield say it’s ‘making Christmas merrier’. Yeah, just the way Santa likes it. 

Every kid gets a free reindeer headband, presumably after they just take a quick COVID-19 PCR test. Just kidding, Westfield, don't sue me. Why would Westfield hand out free headbands. Just kidding, there is nothing on Westfield's website to indicate they are testing kids for COVID, but this is now and that is December and two months is a very long time in 2020.

It is my understanding that Santa has been granted a travel exemption to bring his herde of marauding wildebeest into Australia, which is more than anyone except Tom Hanks and Shane Warne and Tony Abbott and Lord Sugar and Nicole Kidman has received this year. I wonder what it’ll be like stuck in a hotel room in the Stamford Plaza with a bunch of reindeer for 14 days.

Ah, Christmas shopping

Christmas really is simply the most wonderful time of the year...

Providing you stay away from shopping centres and all of the people.  Shopping centres at Christmas are proof that misery and despair are accessible to anybody.  The public suck at the best of times, but they reserve a little extra something for the festive season.

I love how we commemorate the birth of a man who pleaded with us to eschew personal possessions by trampling each other half to death in the hopes of snagging the last Teenage Pregnancy Barbie at Target. Seeking salvation - you're doing it wrong, shopping anarchists.

And the person who came up with the phrase the customer is always right has obviously never worked with customers.

Having previously worked in a hotel chain, I can say with confidence that when a disgruntled customer thinks they are right, they are usually wrong, and a freakin' nut job, and would be banned from the establishment if I had my way.

Also, I don't understand the desperate need to get the parking spot closest to the door.  I imagine some people could do with a little wander from their car to the food court.

Getting the closest park doesn't make you special.  And you don't have a parking angel who gets you a good spot near the door, because celestial beings have nothing better to do than hover around your shit mobile and make sure you get a fabulous parking spot.

And how about the shop assistants in David Jones?  I believe some of the largest sticks known to man are shoved permanently up their backsides.  These people used to be required to think and calculate basic math equations in their head, old school style, but it looks like their sole duties now consist of glaring at you with disdain for daring to approach their counter, interrupting their Facebook status update and waving objects over a scanner until it beeps.  Liaising with these people equals slow death.  Thank goodness for online shopping.

Ironically, the shops that are the least annoying are the ones where you leave your standards, taste and any measure of class at the door - the $2 shops.  This is where you can buy all manner of faux-marble Greek and Roman statuary and cheap whore cosmetics.  Fortunately the pretentious gits of the world refuse to ever be seen in these stores.

Oh, and effing baby strollers.  These mini humvees are apparently designed to ensure your baby can survive an encounter with a herd of charging wildebeest.  While I can understand mothers of small, screaming little people being a tad cranky in the mall, what's everyone else's excuse at this most jolly time of the year?

Even if you aren't forced to liaise with humanity on your shopping trip, they may still get you through the air conditioning system, which kindly regifts the disgusting, contagious pathogens of hundreds of people as a present to you.

Merry Christmas!

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.

When Christmas and Zombies Attack

It's that wonderfully special time of the year, where everyone you meet is tired and crankypants and just wants to go home and not play with anyone anymore ever.  That's Christmas; the most magical time of the year.  Every year I forget that the year before I swore to myself that I should not work the week before Christmas because it totally, totally sucks, but here I am, yet again.

It's completely draining.  I'm pretty sure I had a microsleep on the way up in the elevator this morning somewhere between floors six and ten, and every hour of the day feels like a lifetime.  It's like being forced to watch a whole season of Keeping Up With the Carcrashians in a day, except no-one wears baggy leather slut pants and, according to my corporate directory, there are no men called Kanye in the house, yo.  Although sometimes my life feels like a reality trash carcrash.

Shopping centres are also hardcore at this time of the year, but imagine how Santa feels?  The man's gotta be a sadist, willingly inviting all those little terrorists to sit on his lap all day.  Who does that? Fortunately for us suckers enduring this last working week before Christmas, it'll all be over by Friday, when the day of reckoning is upon us and the zombie alpacas will come and suck our brains out.  I can't imagine that anyone will be able to tell the difference, to be honest.

The Jolly Red Man

Given that it's Christmas and I have a slightly large Christmas obsession, it's time for the obligatory blog about Santa.  Numerous people over the years have joked that Santa is not real but I know this to be false, because he is currently signing autographs and entertaining hordes of shrieking, bratty children at my local shopping centre.  If that's not proof of life then I don't know what is.  Crazy, unbelieving grown-ups.

Although Santa's wholesome image is somewhat tainted in my view, given that he must be on crack to be able to personally deliver presents to billions of people in roughly ten hours.  Maybe the missus slips something into his cookies. 

By the looks of things, the jolly rotund red dude has been putting in some time at the gym over recent months.  He's looking rather buff-ish, but he still could do with a little more time rocking the treadmill.  His weight loss was probably instigated by the new sleigh weight restrictions, which have been tightened this year due to back injury complaints from some of his beloved reindeers. 

On the plus side, Santa has been approached by those people who make calendars of men in uniform to do his own 12-month spread to raise money for starving elves in Africa.   It was a no brainer for Mr C. 

I have heard on the rumour mill that I need to try harder because I am slipping down Santa's nice list.  I am a little surprised that I made the cut in the first place.  I went to Santa's website the other day to try and find out what I had done wrong and how I could redeem myself in the next six sleeps.   

The first thing I noted about http://www.northpole.com/ was the fact that the domain name would be perfectly suited for another type of toy and entertainment site, but one that is more appropriate for adult viewing.  I'm not judging, but what the fuck?  And the first thing that popped up when I hit the site was toy advertising, as if Santa would stoop so low as to buy toys from Amazon made by those communist wannabe elves in Chinese factories.

The website heavily features Raymond, the trainee reindeer who evidently won't be flying this year, perhaps because he doesn't have enough miles under his collar just yet.  I'm sorry, but who the hell is Raymond in Santa Claus folklore?  There is also Biff the Mailroom Elf, who has a PH.D in Mail Sortation, which means he is qualified to work at McDonalds North Pole, and Will the North Pole weatherman, who has studied Snowology. 

I wish I studied Snowology rather than psychology, journalism and underwater basketweaving (the latter being the layman's understanding of how Arts students fill in their days at university).  Will's hobbies seem to include weather forecasting, but his special skill, like many of the staff at the Bureau of Meterology, is incorrect weather forecasting.  Although the North Pole Frosty Weather Reader Meter, which is a sort of glorified weather station, must assist Santa enormously.

And that is the magic of the jolly red man.

Bogan gingerbread housing estates

It is widely acknowledged that I am somewhat obsessed with all things Christmassy, but there is one thing that really gets my goat.  Gingerbread.  There's nothing like the smell of fresh gingerbread cooking in the oven.  It's been over twenty years since I last ate gingerbread, when I was suffering from glandular fever and hepatitis-A, and I must say the aroma still makes me want to run and barf into the nearest garbage bin.

The odour is utterly, utterly repugnant to me.  You may smell sweet, sweet candy; I smell warmed up old garbage bags full of vanilla and cinnamonny grossness with a hint of burnt hair.  I don't much care for the taste either.



For some unfathomable reason, people who like to rampantly bake things think it's a super idea to make mini-me houses from gingerbread and other confectionery at Christmas time.  I call this out as a stupid tradition. 

Although this dirty little baking activity would improve immeasurably in my eyes if they instead created bogan housing estates and the like, rather than pretty stand-alones in the suburbs.  Everyone knows the 'burbs are densely populated with middle-class bogans and not marshmellow men with carob bud garden beds.  Let's keep it real, Martha Stewart wannabes.

Given the tremendously traumatic experience faced by those two young hoodlums, Hansel and Gretel, you'd think that baking edible housing estates would be discouraged, and you'd think their self-inflicted tale of terror would be used as an example to show the kiddies that eating apartment blocks will make you fat.  The timely message is right there, ready to be rammed down the throats of those little cake overeaters.  Educating kids on obesity; you're doing it wrong, Federal Government. 

The Christmassy lollies that have me in a dither at the moment are Cadbury's Electrical Chocolates, which contain insulated conductors that are used to produce a charge through your brain when you chew them.  Totally true story; I wouldn't make this up.  Cadbury calls them Magical Elves, but I like my name better.  The current batch have a particularly high wattage due to what Cadbury determines as 'popping candy', but I think they are wrong and it is due to some super duper electrical wiring.  



I'm not letting this wattage thing go, Cadbury, so it's best you come clean on your sugary secrets.  It's probably a bit negligent of me to discuss these electric powered chocolates, given that Cadbury has copyright on magical elves, the ellipse device, the colour purple and probably the word purple for all I know.  I'm like the Julian Assange of the confectionery world.  I better watch my back or I'll be kidnapped by gingerbread men in licorice balaclavas.  

And while we're on the subject of confectionery, I'd like to make a comment or two on Cadbury's lack of attention to detail when making their Flakes.  I have been one of their clients for many a year; indeed I imagine my purchases of their products have put some of their CEOs children through years of private school education.  But I to say that my disappointment - my DISMAY! - in their packaging has boiled to the surface.  The Flake bits FALL OUT IN MY HAND!!!  They are making my life a misery.  Can't they teach the people in their factories to seal the foil properly?  How hard can it be?



You callin' me a fackin bogan aye?
Gingerbread this, aye!



Please, Santa?



I'm not fussy - it doesn't HAVE to be red. 
But I'll be disappointed if you go to the trouble and it's not.

Why did it take Google a whole 0.33 seconds to find 7.4 million ferrari logos?  I can understand the extended delay if I were searching for knitting patterns, but not for one of the fastest sports road cars in the world.  Try harder Google.