A Tale of Two Warring Tribes

I’m off to the big football game on Saturday. The one where they play with oval shaped balls.

Collingwood versus Carlton at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, the World, THE UNIVERSE.  

Should be fun, if I don’t die in the crossfire between two warring tribes.

I’ve made a lame attempt to learn a bit about these tribes, so I can negotiate my way out of a blood-soaked armed combat situation if the need arises.

Back in 1892 (or maybe it was 2189, I forget), a bunch of tribes joined together in Melbourne, Australia to create a new form of entertainment for the masses, to replace the previous form of entertainment that involved watching people die of bubonic plague or something. I don’t know; I was unalive then. 

One of these tribes was known as Collingwood, and everyone dressed in black and white and stripes and nothing else. They all looked very much like human zebras but they’d bust your chops if you said that to their faces so no-one did ever. 

The Collingwood tribe took fortress in a crowded, unhygienic place with historic buildings and, like modern times, most people worked in places and did other things when they weren't doing the work things. 

This tribe grew and grew until it had over 300,000 likes on Facebook which is important because Facebook likes meant everything to everyone in 1892.

The other tribe was known as Carlton, and to this day do much the same thing as the Collingwood tribe with their days, but they have only 225,000 likes, so what even is the point of them. 

Back in the day, both tribes spent much of their free time engaging in hobbies such as breeding rats and suffering from typhoid and cholera and other health related conditions. It was the fun, carefree days.

And since 1892, on one day of the week, both these tribes gather in sports grounds and watch men throw their balls, while they engage in cheering and alcohol drinking and the ensuing violent tussles and then go to bars to discuss all of those things in gratuitous detail. 

Both tribes still obsess day and night about the hunting and gathering of the points earned at these sporting fixtures with the aim of bragging about it the next day at the work places and while they huddle in shops to purchase caffeinated beverages. It’s just what they do.

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.

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.



Thinking actually works.

I seem to be on a foot-long sub blog fiesta at the moment.  What's going on there?  Who the heck knows.

I had a little thought bubble today.  I know it was wrong, and I know I should just block all mental and intellectual activity as soon as it pops into my little brain, but it happened OKAY.  It. Just. Happened.  But I will be aware of it happening next time and nip it in the bud, because we can't just have people thinking all over the place.  My thought went something along the lines of this.  WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FEKING STUPID PEOPLE IN THE WORLD???


Thinking is essentially good,
but best keep your pants on.

By my reckoning, at least 50% of the population went to Dickhead College, where there is no university entrance index to get you in.  Stupid gits just allow the academia to follow them around for 20 minutes and then they're magically enrolled. 

Despite the fact that the process of reasoning and deduction is unique to human beings, shitloads of fools seem utterly incapable of stopping to think about the consequences of their actions.

What they need to do is sit down, have a good hard look at themselves, probably note at this point how poorly attired they are, and perhaps note that the world won't complain if they pull their pants up or wear a dress that covers their arse, and then do the exact opposite of what they were going to do because what they had planned was essentially a really stupid idea.

Look to The Thinker as an example.  Sort of.  I'm about to give you pretty much the best advice anyone will ever give you so inhale it in. 

In so much as thinking is GOOD, it is usually best you keep your pants on while doing it, particularly if you are sitting on a bench in a public park or on a rock at The Gates of Hell, otherwise known as the security checkpoint in the lobby of your workplace.  Swans, especially, don't really approve of public nudity.  There's not much swans do like.  I love swans; they are my kind of people. 

Big Mobs of Public Holidays

Here in Canberra we've just simultaneously celebrated hot air balloon season and fireworks season.  At least that seems to be the takeaway for me.  It's probably best to not try these things at the same time, particularly if you are doing them in your living room.  Although if you are going to do it in front of the TV, it is probably a good idea to drink a lot of anything with an alcohol content beforehand.  Only good things can happen once the vodka's kicked in.

The other week we had the old duck's - Canberra's - 100th birthday blowout.  The fireworks were meh (I forgot that low expectations are key), and the omnipresent hot air balloons were either terrifying (Darth Vader) or lethal (crashing into the Treasury building).

I'm thinking spatial awareness might be one of the more important attributes to bring to the table if you want to drive a supersized ball of plastic powered by a naked flame around the sky.  But what do I know, I drive a Toyota Corolla on bitumen.  Although I probably am one of only a handful of locals who have never sideswiped a government building. 

The Darth Vader one went over my house at dawnish, so that was pretty cool.  Although the downside from telling people about my dark little visitor was that all day at work people shouted Star Wars references at me which are either so overused as to be made redundant, or I didn't understand them at all because my brain doesn't place a high priority on storing popular culture references, particularly those from decades ago.  

And then when I faked confusion, because it entertains me so, they decided I needed superfluous explanations, and, well, I just don't care enough about Luke and the Solo Man or whatever his name is.

I seem to be filibustering to come up with a blog post these days.  Geez, I'm not looking for Pulitzer material, I'm just trying to fill the space between the ads that I didn't ask for. 

Why I hate Sudoku

10,000 years ago - which is just a few years before Rolf Harris learnt how to manouvre a piece of butcher's paper to elicit noise because he couldn't play a guitar - a Chinaman sat alone on a hill, probably somewhere in the hills in China, and wondered what to do with his day. 

He was bored, you see, kind of how Westerners feel when an inconsiderate thunderstorm screws with their internet reception and they can't spend the afternoon LOLing at I Can Haz Cheeseburger cats. Except the Chinaman didn't have electricity or Google, he barely had dial-up internet access, so he was really bloody bored as shit.  

So what did he do?  The little bastard decided to invent Sudoku, didn't he.  Nothing to do, so let's create a monstrosity of a cryptic puzzle that no-one can ever solve because they aren't friggin' mindreaders, they don't have a spare 53 days to complete a stupid brainteaser and they aren't blessed with the patience of a Buddhist. 

Only someone who can focus the mind on meditating for hours and hours and hours has the patience for this shit.  Humour me while I curse some more - I FUCKING HATE THIS GAME. (Disclaimer: Probably because I am really shite at it)

I first discovered Sudoku last year, when I was stranded in an airport in Florida as a ferocious hurricane threatened to blow the state away.  Apparently planes don't do hurricanes.  My internet refused to work, so I resorted to the delightfully quaint and old-fashioned pen and paper to entertain me. 

I started about 24 easy games of Sudoku, and felt a vague sense of achievement and satisfaction each time I gave up and looked at the answers.  Sometimes you just gotta keep your expectations low.  Plus shit gets done a whole lot quicker with this approach.

I'm currently trying to complete a hard Sudoku.  I don't know why - but I did emerge from a Coles supermarket today with a touch of a headache, so maybe I was abducted by fresh food aliens in the fruit and veggie patch, curious at why anyone would ever voluntarily eat celery.  I'm also trying to complete the cryptothon without cheating.  I honestly don't know what's come over me.  Maybe the Sudoku's inherent Buddhist teachings are rubbing off.



Can this game possibly get any more annoying? I need a game plan.  Would butcher's paper help?  It's got Rolf out of many a sticky situation.  What would Jack Bauer do? He'd glue some C4 to the page and blow it all the way back to Beijing.  Alternatively, I could just watch some telly.



Too much Sudoku



Ramping Up

I haven't blogged for three-ish weeks. What's with that? Let's see, what's happened in that time. I went to Mustique, I got papped on the beach by some boganey bogans, I got called a 'shop window mannequin' by some depressing author who pens books in a novel, publishable-type manner, and then I did this and that and stuff and thing.

I quite frankly can't be bothered to construct complete sentences, but who can blame me, I am a royal after all. Oh, hang on, sorry, I think I'm getting my life muddled with that of Duchess Kate.

In the last three weeks I have been to the dentist. So there, Duchess Kate. Our paths are so eerily similar is shocks me. But shit got weird today. Very, very viard. Everything was just ticketyboo until I accidently drove up a ramp onto the back of the truck. I know. Weird.

Like there aren't enough things to worry about when I'm whooshing around in my Toyota; now I have haphazard ramps to add to the list. Rampophobia; look it up people. If anyone from AAMI is reading this, you're not really in a position to pass judgement, because I've seen your ads. You would insure a tractor-driving monkey if it could afford comprehensive.

Ruinous Rats and Drowning Swimmers

It seems the long-awaited (in that we've been waiting eons and eons) NBN rollout is been sabotaged by jaded and ravenous rats in Darling Downs.  I have no idea where Darling Downs is, nor do I especially care, but I assume it is in some inaccessible part of Australia where the NBN will fail to work properly anyway.

I think perhaps the Gillard Government could provide a rat welfare program for vermin that are just scraping by on the poverty line. Or at the very least allow them to dodge filing a tax return in 2012-13.

Perhaps the government could also administer some type of rat fulfilment scheme, where rat youth could while away their days playing free pokies and developing an alcohol or nicotine addiction rather than spending their time destroying the somewhat futile government infrastructure. There is no evidence that I know of that suggests rats suffer from gambling dependence, so I'm sure a program of this nature has some legs.

Speaking of rats, two swimmers that were chosen for the Australian Olympic team are watching their careers go down the gurgler. The two boys - I don't know their names, and don't really care, and couldn't really be bothered Googling them or reading their names in the attached article to find out - that will carve up the dirty, grubby, swampy Thames during the Games in London in July have found themselves in sticky festering septic water again, thanks to the fact that they are both total dickheads.

I think one of them broke someone's jaw once and the other lied about something or something. It seems to me that if the people who pay for your togs and your jetsetting around the globe already hate you it is perhaps best to not give them any more ammunition, like access to photos on Twitter of you posing with guns and ammunition. 

But the boys did just that, most likely because they are not terribly smart; I suppose you don't have to be to pursue a black line up and down a pool. I expect the left wing media and Swimming Australia wouldn't have blinked an eyelid if the boys had been embracing a javelin, for example, which is, however, also a nifty weapon to be clutching if you are suddenly overtaken with the psychotic predisposition.

But guns, woah, guns are dangerous. Leftwingers (ie. much of the media) are terrified of guns.  They start  hyperventilating when anyone holds a gun: "Aghhh! It's a serial killer! We're all gonna die!"  It really is anyone's guess why they allow coverage of the swimming at the Olympics in that case, because kids drown in pools all the time. And doing backflips on a thin mattress and coining it gymnastics isn't the best idea for your posture.  And sprinting over hurdles is just a wacky brainchild.

I am going to Florida shortly, home sweet home of redneck alligators and Disney World, and I think it is an ideal location and an opportune time for me to buy a handgun. Just because you can.  I don't mean at Disney*, I mean at Wallmart. I’ve always wanted to go to Wallmart. 

And then I can post some snaps on Facebook with my new toy. One of my favourite pastimes is watching leftwingers get so agitated that their heads spin around until they explode, so what better grounds do I need?  And then I could get labelled a pro-gun extremist - ie, the Age's name for anyone who disagrees with the Age on gun control.

Anti-gun groups and the nutty left wing media windbags start screaming like banshees about banning guns altogether whenever they hear the word. They seem to think the crime rate would simply disappear if guns didn’t exist. The assumption that everyone would start shooting everyone if everyone had a gun is absurd. And the assumption that criminals would forget about murdering, raping and pillaging society if there were no guns is also idiotic.

The left wing media should be targeting Federal judges, who often release serious criminals back onto the streets, believing they can be rehabilitated. They believe murderers are basically good people except for their tendency to sometimes kill people.

* Just kidding Disney.  Why would you sell handguns? What I mean is please don't sue me.

Witch Bank and Cardboard Smiles

It recently came to my attention - when I say recently I mean about two years ago - that I have be holding three cheques that need to be deposited into my bank account. Several of these cheques date back to antiquated times, when I had bleached blonde hair, but let's not dwell on the great depression era.  Why do we Australians write ‘cheque’ with a fancy French spelling anyway? I mean, what the heque? It's a bit of a pain in the neque.

Only one of these bank-approved pieces of paper in my possession was worth much - a tax refund - and who knows why it came to me via my real, non-virtual, spider-infested letter box. Perhaps my pen slipped and I accidently ticked the glacial mail rather than the lightning bolt electronic mail when I was taxing myself.

So last Saturday morning, evidently in the absence of anything more practical or sensible to do, I went into my bank to cash these random cheques. Has anyone been into a 21st century bank? They are totally spooky. A young woman in a fancypants bank suit meets you at the door and smiles at you and enquires of your general wellbeing and then asks "and how may I help you today?"

I know, right? Totally freaked me out, mainly because I thought she was one of those generic, photogenic smiling cardboard cutouts that banks, insurance companies and government departments use as a doorstop to lure you into their establishment. But she was real.

I mean, who does that? Smile in a bank? What sort of bank ponzi scheme is this? After my shock discovery that the smiley cardboard cutout was in fact a real human with real human teeth, I decided that she had to be a virtual humanbot; a mirage created by politeness, smiles and rainbows, that's beamed off the walls, right into the path of your face.

If it wasn't completely inappropriate I would have tried to poke her head to see if she was issued by an overhead projector.  Maybe then I would get to see the virtual bank manager and then the real-life police officer with real-life handcuff accessories.

Or perhaps this bank welcomer / helper is a white witch, whose motus operandi is to take money from the rich and then deposit it into the same person’s bank account.  The most pointless witch strategy ever, but that's white witches for you.

You see, this is nothing like the bank service that I used to know.  Banks used to be a great place to enjoy waiting in queues for hours and hours, sometimes weeks, and that's before you even got to the cash cow counter, where you were generally addressed by a uninterested, grumpy bank teller without a real or fake cardboard cutout smile.  My bank trip the other day took about 8.3 seconds.

I imagine the reason the service in banks is so tremendous these days is because they have no customers; only cyberbot clients who login remotely. Praise the lord for the interweb.

Emergency Bogan Plan

I was sitting at the traffic lights today, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, when a rogue teenage hooligan (is there really any other type of teenager) ran from behind my car toward the car in front, apparently engaging in some type of ritualistic car musical chairs at the traffic lights.  As you do.  And it occurred to me that I really was not prepared for a potential carjacking.  It happens, you know.

Like any self-respecting girl-about-town or femme fatale serial killer, I tend to carry a bunch of things in my car that can be used as weapons, just in case one of life's bogans decide to Toyota-jack my little red car, channel their delusional road rage in my direction, or break-in to tag their name in the dust on my dashboard.  The latter is a bit of a stretch; how many bogans know how to spell their own name?

I've carried a concealed hockey stick under my passenger seat for years - and an old blood-stained hockey ball - for security and, let me tell you, I sure as heck know how to use them.  I played high school girl's hockey, during high school girl's hockey's Underbelly years, and I often practiced selective hearing when it came to the referee's whistle. 

So it has been brought to my attention that I might need to get in some practice of my emergency bogan plan, which will involve whipping out my hockey death stick and shoving it into the adam's apple of a six-foot tall hypothetical bogan with four teeth and a brown mullet who is standing at my window yelling random, unintelligble bogan slogans at me.

I think I will need to rehearse this.  At the traffic lights.  In peak hour.  You can never be too careful about which direction the loonies are going to come from.  Safety before sanity, I always say.  I might pop over to bogan-filled Charnwood to see if there are any volunteers to stand-in as the lone carhacker/jacker.  I can't see how that plan can go wrong.

I've recently added a jar of Aldi's Bockwurst to my collection of vehicular self-defence weapons.  Yes, I have some German sausage in a jar, in my car.  I found it rolling and carouseling under the driver's seat.  I think someone gave it to me ages ago.  It may save my life one day.  One can apparently boil them in five minutes for eating purposes, or chuck them at the very temple of boganism, for the purpose of serving the local community. You're welcome, Canberra.

As Cold As Ice

I'm having serious issues with Canberra's weather at the moment.  Whenever I throw major spacattacks over the stupidity of our species, my sister always harps on about how seething with anger, rage or just general perturbness hurts only you, which is all very well, but I am not going to let ye old Southern Tablelands or whatever geographic area we fall into get away with this cold shite, cos it's not winter yet. 

This is a gross breach of the weather terms and conditions and must be addressed forthwith.  And if only I had a crowbar for every time someone said to me, "well, isn't this weather just lovely? It's so nice and frosty." Completely fucking loopy, these people are, and we should set them on fire, if for no other reason than to keep the rest of us nice and toasty. 

A big bonfire of stupid people.  Marshmellows are a possibility. Foreigner sung I'm as cold as ice, and I'm willing to sacrifice you to make me warm.  And I'm inclined to agree with them. I imagine this is why they invented reverse cycle airconditioning.

No, Foreigner didn't invent reverse cycle airconditioning; I think it was the Ice Queen from Narnia.  Five years ago global warmist Tim Flannery told us we'd be warm by now.  But he also said that the dams would never be filled again, so... 

Could it be that Flannery is just your typical leftwing environmentally friendly garden variety lunatic with no evidence base for his hysterical, histrionic weather predictions?  I for one am shocked by that.

Well, this post is a little awkward, and has possibly shown my serial killer tendencies that I try to hide from all but a few, concerned that I will be judged harshly and villified by society. 

My dodgy genealogy

It's fast approaching our Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee.  I imagine you're not very excited by this event, but that's really not my problem or concern.

Speaking of Britain, I've long been convinced that there should be a vast castle somewhere on the sweeping, pebbled British coastline in my bloodline that I should be able to inherit.  I actually feel completely and utterly jipped that this is not the case. 

But if the Australian Government ever decide that the only people in the world who are allowed to inhabit Aussieland are the ones with 18 different types of multicultural leaves in their family tree - but no British ones - then I'll be as safe as castles. 

The last time I was in Britain, the local Immigration officials were all like, "you need to go back to the country that's written on your passport", and I was all like, "w'ever".  I live in Australia, so I guess they won that Battle of Heathrow.  This all happened a fairly long time ago, mind you, when I was younger, stupider and rocking hideous peroxide blonde locks.  Perhaps the latter provides a vague explanation for my illegal immigrant behaviour.

For the record, I do not condone, endorse or recommend debating with immigration officials ever, but I suppose most rational thinking people already know that.  I imagine even people who live in Queanbeyan know this is a very bad idea.  I know that's a stretch, but sometimes they surprise you.

Speaking of towns that are located near a 'metropolis' but pretend their economy can stand on their own two caravan parked feet, I have recently been dismayed - DISMAYED! - on two occasions to find that the local Queanbeyan Coles supermarket has somehow deemed it appropriate and necessary to pose one of their humanly named delivery vehicles next to the trashy caravan park (their trucks are called Xena, Kevin, William and so forth). 

My hysteria is due to the fact that the aforementioned truck is called Elizabeth.  Can you even imagine my horror? And what would my namesake Her Majesty think?  On behalf of the Palace, one is rather unamused and feeling slightly slandered.

WHAM! to The Cold

I've long been convinced the weather was invented to give boring people something to talk about.  If my theory is correct, and let's be frank, they usually are except when they're often not, that makes me quite the bore, because I spend a bit of time harping on about tropical depressions and cloud patterns and so forth.

I bought a book about clouds a few years ago after my mum bought the same book and wouldn't give me hers.  It's a little pocket-sized dynamo on cloud formations.  Don't judge me - you're probably not smart enough to understand it anyway.  Which is your own fault. I leaf through the book from time to time when a peculiar cloud catches my eye.

I write of clouds because they go hand in hand with the most horrid season of them all. Winter.  I completely despise the cold, mainly because I'm not a polar bear.  

The only thing more annoying than the cold is people who like the cold.  Every single time someone defends the indefensible - winter - I pout and pretend they are being thumped in the mouth with the Zok! or Kapow! sound effects a la the original Batman television series.     

Winter is also a challenge issued by nature to see how sexy you can look when covered in layers. Challenge accepted, winter. Fortunately I will miss a portion of the winter brouhaha in Canberra this year as I venture to la la land of Hollywood, DISNEYLAND!!!!, and Hawaii, which is completely perfect in every darn way.

Wikipedia and other Wild Animals

I'm always looking for interesting things to write about, so it's always an excellent plan to not divulge too much information when engrossed in a juicy but trivial conversation with me. Think of me as the antithesis of a clinical psychologist, and nearly exactly like a Wikipedia.  That's just a handy tip, you know, between cyber friends.

Tarongo Zoo's Jumilah

What other variety of friends are there in this daring new world of the interweb? I'm not sure, but I imagine my soul mate Wikipedia could tell me the definition of friend, with or without disamiguation. I recall some of my lecturers' disdain of Wikipedia when I was at university.  Like or hate Wikipedia, you can argue with it, and that's kind of the point.

It rather confused me until I realised that academics were so distrustful of the Wiki medium because it rudely offered other arguments on a particular issue, which counteracted their delusional, one-sided, left wing opinion and delusional, one-sided, left wing textbooks.  And, more importantly, they had to undergo some scrutiny from a source that hadn't passed their stamp of approval, which meant they weren’t able to freely indoctrinate us poor sods.

You think I'm exaggerating? My Political Science lecturer refused to even acknowledge the existence of Ronald Reagan when we studied the Cold War, let alone the fact that he ended it, which involved me storming out of the lecture in disgust.  DISGUST!  I was TOTES CAPSLOCK ANGRY.  Unbelievable little sheltered world these academics reside in. Often crazy smart, but usually crazy delusional.

I remember one occasion when I went to my PolSci tute and counteracted a different but typically left wing tutor with, "well, Wikipedia mentions other arguments too", knowing full well the glare and indignation I would receive from the sanctimonious twat. The horror on his face. Ah, memories. They were good times indeed.

Hm, I didn't want to write about Wikipedia or academic brainwashers.  *sigh* I'm still working on that going-off-on-tangents disorder that so afflicts me. Anyway, so last Christmas I was blessed with a gift voucher to attend a Feed the Animals thingy at Canberra's National Zoo and Aquarium, and I am taking up the kind offer next weekend. Should be amazing, unless of course I have my arm mutilated by a wild animal.

I've been completely besotted with big cats since a very young age, particularly tigers, because they are just so darn terrifying, yet so photogenic. It disheartens me that they are so endangered that they need to be protected from man via cages, but it is for the best, and they lead extremely pampered lives in the zoo clink, so all is well with that in my mind. I just hope the lions and tigers and bears will get off Wikipedia for long enough to say hello.

Classes of Reality Televisual Drugs

As nauseating as all reality television programming may be, I separate them into three distinct categories for my own ease, in the way that lawmakers and law enforcers grade drugs through a class system; bad, badderer and baddest.

Class C reality programs are the least harmful of all.  But like Class C drugs, you have to be pretty dopey to engage with them, and even more dopey to want to guest star on them. The key players of Class C reality are good people (and dogs) doing good things for the benefit of the community. Customs officers, lifesavers, random breathe testing and police dogs, amongst many others.

Good eggs and canines who can save your bacon, or your luggage, at any point in your life.  The most effective means of making a guest appearance in an episode on one of these shows is to just be yourself, providing you are a drug-taking, law-breaking dickhead caught in a serious intelligence vacuum.

The only real talent these guest stars possess is that they are dense enough to want to be seen handcuffed on national television. Taking Class C drugs of the likes of anabolic steroids and minor tranquillisers may be where the problem started.  Or maybe I am being too kind and they are just morons.

Watching Class B reality is marginally more serious that watching Class C, and includes Australian Idol, Australia's Got Talent, Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules. While the guest stars of these shows may possess some hidden talent like flame throwing or horse whispering, it's still not that interesting watching someone cook a souffle, even if you were taking Class B drugs of the likes of amphetamines, codeine and cannabis.

Watching Class A reality is serious and will cause dependence and constipation. You must seek professional help as soon as the current season of Ladette to Lady is complete, because as rivetting as it is watching a bunch of skanky hoes turn into a bunch of skanky hoes who miraculously learn how to use a fork, you are effectively addicted to crystal meth, heroine, cocaine and/or esctasy.

Other Class A reality includes The Amazing Race, The Farmer Wants a Wife, Four Weddings, Dating in the Dark, Survivor, Conviction Kitchen, The Block, Please Marry my Boy.  That riduclous Big Brother started it all.  Seriously, why are any of these people on television?

And if you are inclined to watch this trash, can I suggest that - if you record an episode - you do not supply it to another person.

Google Uranus, Slippers, Slappers and Bikies

I watched The Truman Show last night, the 90's Jim Carrey movie about a man whose entire life has been broadcast on cable television without his knowledge on his very own dedicated channel, kind of like Keeping up with the Kardashians should be on a dedicated moron channel.

All of his family, friends and his wife are paid actors, albeit not very good ones. Kind of like Keeping up with the Kardashians. I'd never seen this flick, so I though it'd be worth a look. It really wasn't.  Kind of like Keeping up with the Kardashians.

The movie came out before reality shows became ubiquitous in mainstream televisionland, but I imagine the makers of Google were busy taking notes during this flick back in the day - in between their kindergarten naps - for their future gargantuan project of mapping every nook and cranny of earth for their search engine giant. I wonder if Google are thinking of mapping other planets, like a version of Google Uranus*. Hmm, probably not.

What else is going on? Today Aussie PM Gillardo finally threw the Slipper and the Slapper into the cesspool; I'll leave it up to you to work out which daft fool is which.

Throwing out two trashbags - who have swindled the Commonwealth, amongst other charming exploits - for the price of one (election) sounds like a wise move to me, but me and my political preferences would say that. Slippery Pete, Slapper Craig - for fucks sake that party is a disaster.

On another note, I'm so bored with the stupid bikie gangs in this country. Do they really call themselves bikies? Sounds a bit girly to me, like a rampaging horde of 10-year-old girls prancing down the road on their bedazzled pink wheels with ribbons on the handle bars and catfighting it out with semi-automatics outside their local shopping centre.

If these bikie dickheads come anywhere near me while I'm in my current state - that being with massive toothache - it'll be the last thing they ever do. Forget police dogs, just let me loose on them before I've had a kick of Nurofen into my bloodstream. But it needs to be before next Wednesday. The Day of Wisdom Extraction.  The police have no powers to stop them, so just let them shoot each other willy-nillly at a pre-arranged meeting point.  Like Afghanistan.

* Please don't sue me Google.

FBI Reality Barbie

I was watching The Amazing Race the other night, in all probability because my brain was enduring some type of psychosis that meant it couldn't unearth the remote to flick the channel to something more appealing, like 'mute' or 'off'.

One of the teams in the latest series of this fast-paced global backpacking reality game show are a pair of female FBI agents, that look and sound a lot like FBI barbie would if she were involved in law enforcement and crime prevention and could bend her fingers to clasp a glock.

While this pair behave like they have the IQ of a plastic doll - harsh, but true - I figure they must have some manner of skill or attribute working in their favour or the Bureau wouldn't have hired them. Of course, there is always affirmative action, the technique some women rely on to get to where they want to be in life. Winning on merit is, like, so passe.

In this particular episode, all teams were required to erect a fairly complicated and problematic tent structure thing, replete with approximately 80,000 tent poles and throw cushions (seriously), under the direction of a slew of completely incomprehensible instructions. It is my understanding that the more complex a task, the simpler the instruction booklet should read.  However, that's called common sense, which really has no place in the world of instruction manuals.

The all-female FBI pair floundered in their task, not because they couldn't work as a team, but because they "didn't have a male on their team who knows about tents". The words of a couple of FBI agents, not mine.  Which begs the question: when Australia allows women on the frontline - presumably when they have passed the exact same standard of tests as men to earn their place - are they just going to whinge and complain when they don't have a man around to cock their gun for them, because, you know, men know about these things?

Of course there are women in the defence forces who are capable of taking on the same amount of physical strain as the men, but they are few and far between, and they are the ones who just get on with the job without needing to qualify their effort with a gender disclaimer.

What I don't have time for is the garbage I hear from feminists; demanding equality on the one hand, yet special dispensation on the other.  I really can't stand it.  And they constantly bleat about how unfair it is that women are not allowed to do certain jobs, yet they use their gender as an excuse when they fail in the task.  I'm sorry, but I call it as I see it, and this sort of crap just pisses me off.

Coffee Uprising & Comedify your Life

Coffee Uprising

This is an important community announcement to people who claim to be slightly addicted to caffeine. Slightly addicted? There is no “slightly” in addicted. That’s like saying you’re “kind of” stupid. You’re addicted, and stupid for not recognising your addiction. Deal.

I do believe there is no more important way to start your day than with a cuppa. I imagine Mother Teresa used to have a latte before going out blessing people and saving lives. Well there might be a more important way to start your day, but I don’t know what it is.

No-one knows, not even the Hitchhiker's 42 will provide any assistance to this conundrum, which is why the working class peoples of the world who occupy a house with electricity get up at the crack of too-early and start grinding coffee beans in a sleep-induced haze.

Comedify your life

Another fairly fascinating and titillating titbit from the endless catalogue of excitement that is my life is the news that I was blessed with a Sound Machine for Christmas. A Sound Machine is fairly self-explanatory – it is a gadget that has a selection of sounds for any event that happens in your life, and, more significantly, can be used to exasperate anyone in ear shot. I’m not obsessed with my new gadget at all.

Just so you can share in the inexorable excitement, here is a list of its classic sound effects: clap, audience, canned laughter, unlucky, loser, bomb, gun shot, smashed glass, cash register, drum roll, punch line theme, spring, bright idea, wolf whistle, scream, fart and burp. It is the perfect gadget for incredibly immature people like myself. So I’ve started to comic strip my life, comedify my life, if you will.

Sure, I made up the word ‘comedify’. But the word police are too busy reading the thesaurus to care that I made up one. During one of my journalism lectures, a very sombre journalist (see: a sandal-wearing deep thinker) pontificated that it is best to dream up words when you deem that no other word will do. Hmm, I don’t know about that. Alternatively, some good advice would be to branch out and learn the existing words, which seem to be adequate to the rest of the English speaking world.

I am proposing to carry my new gadget friend to places that need a little cheer, like shopping centres, Parliament Question Time and Afghanistan, to name but a few places that need someone to break the ice through a unsolicited manufactured burp or raspberry.

I imagine I will need to engage in a bit of covert action to get in the door, but then everyone will be all agreeable with each other. Or I’ll be shot in the head with an uzi. That’s the inherent risk when you arm yourself with a fun Sound Machine – you never know what’s around the corner.