comicstriphero

Sunday arvo walk in the neighbourhood

2009-03-21T11:45:00.008+11:00

Bike polo anyone?

Let's finish with an historical quiz. Put names to the faces.

Mogblogging like it's 2005...

2009-02-25T13:17:00.002+11:00

LOL-Tobias has come out of semi-retirement....

Fact

2009-02-17T12:05:00.001+11:00

People who sit on hour-long teleconferences, breathing loudly into the receiver the whole time, so that everyone can hear their serial-killeresque heavy breathing = FOUL!!!

Pointless rant #372 - freak weather pattern edition

2009-02-16T11:54:00.003+11:00

I saw people on the weekend wearing scarves.

Honest to goodness, scarves.

The minute the temperature drops below 20 degrees, Sydney people freak and bust out the polar fleece and heavy coats. Despite the fact it's still 95% humidity.

Maybe they're adopting the jockey weight-loss regimen and they're trying to sweat themselves down to their racing weight.

Buncha clowns, I tells ya.

Pretty much sums up my reaction to seeing Matthew Newton in the nude on Underbelly last night

2009-02-10T10:55:00.003+11:00

The hard questions. Asked here.

2009-02-06T13:33:00.003+11:00

Is it wrong of me to ignore an email from a colleague, just because she spelled my first name incorrectly?

And I don't just mean a typo. I mean wrong by about 50% of the total letters in my first name (which, before you ask, is definitely not hard to spell).

The error comes despite having worked together for 12 months, and despite the fact she would have had to have entered my name in when entering my email address.

Well anyway, that urgent email is going to sit there for a while. At least for as long as it takes me to finish this post...

Which, in a seamless segue, is something I was originally going to put on twitter. But I realised that I have been foregoing blogging in favour of the odd random tweet.

In particular I'm quite happy with the developing thread of tweets on the new, 18 year-old admin assistant here at work that manages to insert a reference to McDonalds into just about every conversation.

For example, when I complained of a stomach ache, I was usefully informed that cheeseburgers are a surefire cure for stomach ache. When we experienced a blackout, I was urged to race down to McDonalds as they would most certainly be throwing out a whole load of burgers.

Both of these were absolutely ripping suggestions for a vegetarian such as myself (mmmm, unrefrigerated processed meats - delightful!)

Totally worth signing up to twitter and following me just for that.

A guy walks into a cafe...

2009-02-04T08:22:00.003+11:00

"We'll have two herbal teas, bacon and eggs with toast, and scrambled eggs with a side of smoked salmon and mushrooms.

Oh, and we have to be at an appointment in 10 minutes, so
you'd better get onto that straight away."

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go around expecting that the world will bend to your will and expectations, no matter how unreasonable.

It's like those people on the roads who decide that they want to turn left, even if they are in the right-hand lane of a 3-lane highway. Instead of conceding that they've missed the turn and finding somewhere safe to turn around, they just stop dead in the right-hand lane with their left-hand indicator on, waiting for a gap in the traffic, with not a care in the world for the line of 50 cars banked up behind them.

Or the women who force those double-wide prams down narrow, inner-city streets (taking out many a passer-by's ankles on the way) and then act surprised when they don't fit into the teeny-tiny cafes, already crammed full of people and chairs.

It's a scaled-down version of the blokes who driver Hummers around the laneways of Newtown - Newsflash! The built environment will not magically morph itself to adapt to your choices!

.
.
.

Hmmm, maybe next time I go to the cafe I should ask for a decaf...

I hope you are more original with your policies...

2009-01-15T08:44:00.003+11:00

Hang on, hang on.

Haven't I seen that somewhere before?

Obama! You dastardly thief!

I hope Bob and his gang of anthropomorphised work-vehicles and equipment sue his presidential pants off!

Drama! Absurdity! The Occult! Welcome to 21st century communications policy

2009-01-13T12:29:00.005+11:00

~~I hate to make a point with a sledgehammer, but~~ Has anyone seen that play ~~The ISP-Level Filter Trial~~ The Crucible?

Well, according to Wiki, the play begins with revelations that ~~most Australians~~ some village girls may have dabbled in a bit of ~~teh un-legal online activities~~ witchcraft.

These were apparently enabled by ~~off-shore hosted servers~~ Tituba, one of the village family’s slaves, from Barbados.

~~Stephen Conroy~~ Reverend John Hale is summoned to look into the incident. He is an expert in ~~nothing~~ occultist phenomena and is eager to put into practice ~~a completely disproportionate response~~ his acquired learning.

He questions the other village girls, who, in an attempt to avoid being deemed a ~~pr0n-watcher~~ witch, profess a ~~black~~list of ~~websites~~ people they’ve seen with ~~bit-torrent software~~ the Devil.

The play then tells of a descent into hysteria and injustice as ~~Conroy~~ the villagers accuse~~s everyone else~~ others in an attempt to save ~~his reputation~~ themselves. Anyone who dissents against the irrational and deeply flawed ~~ISP-level filtering~~ witchcraft trials are labelled ~~perverts~~ witches, thus undermining any rational criticism of the trials.

As ~~the bureaucrats~~ Danforth says in ~~Senate Estimates~~ Act III, “a~~n ISP~~ person is either with this ~~filtering trial~~ court or he must be counted ~~as having something to hide~~ against it.”

The ~~filtering~~witch trials are the ultimate expression of ~~knee-jerk, politically driven madness~~ intolerance (and ~~the resulting cut in broadband speeds~~ hanging witches is the ultimate ~~irony, coming from the Broadband Minister~~ means of restoring the community's purity); the trials brand all ~~free speech advocates~~ social deviants with the taint of ~~child-pr0n~~ devil-worship and thus necessitate their elimination from the ~~debate~~ community.

Hysteria supplants logic and enables ~~Conroy~~ people to believe that ~~everyday Australians~~their neighbours, whom they have always considered upstanding people, are committing absurd and unbelievable ~~online~~ crimes — communing with the ~~file sharers~~devil, killing babies, and so on.

As we all know, ~~The ISP-Level Filter Trial~~ The Crucible is symbolic of ~~the religious right’s~~ 1950s American paranoia about ~~moral decay~~ communism and illustrates narrow-mindedness, excessive zeal and disregard for the individual that characterised the government’s effort to ~~secure Stephen Fielding’s support in the Senate~~ stamp out a perceived social ill.

Should be coming to a ~~desktop~~ theatre near you shortly!

~~You won't be able to~~ Don't miss it!

Have you heard of the youtube?*

2009-01-10T20:56:00.002+11:00

I'm sure by now everyone's typed "Single ladies" into youtube and been blown away by random people recreating, with varying degrees of success, the lip-smacking choreography in Beyonce's film clip.

If not, for shame! And get thee clicky-clicky on this, this and this, stat!

But to add that, check out this clip of 'j-setting', dubbed over with Unk's Walk it Out (said to be Beyonce's inspiration):

As well as being 100% youtubey goodness, it also solves a long-running mystery for me - just where did Jane Turner get the inspiration for Kath Day-Knight's moves!

*Title taken from real life question asked of me about a year ago, by someone who pretends to know about computers. Oh the hilarity!

Je ne regrette rien

2009-01-02T16:41:00.004+11:00

So it's roughly a year since we upped sticks and moved back to Sydney.

I could probably deliberate for a few hours on the costs and rewards, the things (and people) missed and the (very) hard-won gains, the lost opportunities and the surprise windfalls.

But it really all comes down to one simple fact.

Right now, at this very minute, summernats is on, and I'm not in Canberra.

As the French would say, w00t!

Bloody hippies!

2008-12-24T09:05:00.002+11:00

Protect the planet from gays, Pope says

Saving humanity from homosexuality and transsexuality is as important as saving rainforests, Pope Benedict XVI says.
[...]
Gender theory, which explores sexual orientation and gender identity, could potentially lead to the ''self-destruction'' of the human race by blurring the lines between men and women.

Great! So now, in addition to the homophobes hurling abuse at me from their V8 utes, I also have to watch out for the hippies, hurling energy efficient light-globes at me from their ~~death squads~~ Priuses.

Saw this in the freezer section of woolies t'other day...

2008-12-23T16:21:00.002+11:00

I honestly can't decide whether:

This is a practical joke gone ~~wrong~~ awesomely right. Ie, junior marketing type comes up with this product name as a joke, expecting it to be ruled out somewhere up the hierarchy or at least in focus-groups. But it didn't, and now it's in stores everywhere; OR
This actually tested well in focus groups and no one else shares my cerebral brand of humour.

Having immersed myself recently in Mad Men, I also can't rid myself of the image of Don Draper, dressed immaculately, holding a glass of whiskey and whistfully smoking a cigarette (or four), delivering a meaningful sermon on how 'Breast Munchies' will tap the unfulfilled desires of housewives across 1960s America.

So in conclusion, *massive snigger*!!!

Because I always appreciate getting new music tips from other people...

2008-12-21T19:56:00.002+11:00

December playlist:

(Each track is also from an album well worth your time in exploring)

Never Miss a Beat Kaiser Chiefs (Off With Their Heads)
I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You Black Kids (Partie Traumatic)
You Wouldn't Like Me Tegan and Sara (So Jealous)
Hit the Heartbreaks Black Kids (Partie Traumatic)
Walking on a Dream Empire of the Sun (Walking on a Dream)
Midnight Coward Stars (In Our Bedroom After the War)
Revelry Kings Of Leon (Only By the Night)
Notion Kings of Leon (Only By the Night)
Human The Killers (Day & Age)
Sweet Disposition Temper Trap (Sweet Disposition - single)

That last one is astonishingly good, acktchelly.

Excusable? Or just plain embarrassing?

2008-12-17T15:08:00.008+11:00

I think I’ve turned into an 89 year-old woman.

Last week I told some kids to stop talking in a movie.

Well, not so much ‘told’, but asked them. “Do you guys want to shut up?! Seriously!”

As the LovelyWife notes, there’s a certain passive aggressive quality to my attempts to force my own personal standards of everyday common decency on complete strangers.

We used to live across the road from a child-care centre which, as you’d expect, was adequately fenced. After about 3 months of silent, repressed rage, I could no longer tolerate the daily, after-hours visits by some neighbourhood kids with their two large dogs.

These dogs, instead of being responsibly exercised in a public park, would be allowed to run and bark and crap freely in the child-care centre’s fenced-off play area. For hours. Their owners using the enclosed nature of the play area as a substitute for active supervision and interaction with their dogs.

A more confident person would have confronted these rather meek looking 13 year-olds and their ageing labradors with something like “you shouldn’t be doing that. There’s a park around the corner.” (Or, perhaps, said nothing at all. I’ve lost track of what is acceptable these days).

My attempt was something more like “excuse me, I want you to think about what happens when your dogs use the kids’ play area as a toilet, and then the kids come and play in the play area, and their hands touch the dogs' poo.”

Brilliant, n'est pas?

Anyway, I still maintain that in both the dog incident and the movie scenario, my emergency interventions were justified.

The movie in question was the unnecessarily complex Quantum of Solace – I’d invested several hours and the not inconsiderable ticket price for the privilege of being utterly confused by:

a) the first 45 minutes of storyline;
b) the whole Mathis denouement (even Wiki doesn’t know if his duplicity was a set-up, or if he was a triple-agent); and
c) Alicia Keys’ upper register

However, it seemed to me that for these kids’ parents, the cinema was serving the same purpose as the child-care centre’s fenced-off play-area was serving for the dog-owners – a convenient, enclosed space in which to park their responsibilities whilst they engaged in some other activity.

There was no way these 10 year-old boys were going to be interested in the full 17 hours of the movie and it was hence unsurprising that they resorted to what can only be described as ‘hi-jinks’ up and down the aisles.

My ever-so-slightly assertive request that they be quiet was triggered when they chose the aisle right in front of us to discuss whatever it is kids discuss in cinemas when they are bored by movies pitched way higher than their age group.

It was seriously impeding my ability to keep up with the secret-organisation-holds-stealthy-conference-regarding-purchase-of-pipeline-during-Tosca scene.

I’m most worried, however, by the fact that last night I ‘shh’-ed some women sitting next to me at the Kylie concert.

I knew they were trouble when they came up the aisle already carrying their shoes. Isn’t that something reserved for 5.30pm on Melbourne Cup day?

Or is it now acceptable to walk out your front door with bare feet and shoes in your hands?

(There’s a whole other post there about choosing footwear that’s so useless you end up carrying it, compromising the utility of your hands and feet).

But perhaps I shouldn’t say that I ‘shh’-ed them – I don’t think I was that assertive.

It was more a case of me explaining to them that their incredibly loud, long conversation regarding how they were going to emotionally blackmail their boyfriends into proposing (well, that’s what I imagine the conversation to be about), was getting “a bit distracting for all the people sitting around you.”

But srsly! Who pays $100 to go to a Kylie concert, and then sits there talking through the whole first half?! I just don’t understand. It wasn’t even a case of the occasional comment here or there, in between songs or even in the instrumental interludes between scenes.

These women were shouting their conversation just to hear themselves over the performance. And I needed all my concentration to understand Kylie’s revolutionary cross-cultural interpretation of Barry Manilow classics.

I feel dismayed.

But I'm not sure whether that's because it feels like no one gives a rats about how their behaviour impacts on others, or if it's because I'm a 'shh'-er.

*insert ennui here*

Free IQ test!

2008-12-12T15:00:00.003+11:00

You know what always makes me feel like an idiot?

When I remember that, way back in its first season, I used to anxiously hang out for each new episode of Lost, fully expecting that all the questions would be answered and all mysteries solved.

Genius.

What they are up to now, season 53? And they haven't even finished setting up new mysteries, let alone getting around to solving any of them.

Newsflash! This is not news!

2008-11-18T14:07:00.004+11:00

Have you seen the headlines this week?

Bush-Rudd handshake shakey

Bush on handshake: "I don't understand the fuss. Kevin smells and has girl germs. Everyone knows this. Why would I want to shake his hand for longer than necessary?"

International Diplomatic Crisis! Cretinous creationist with the attention-span of a tea-spoon gets a bit distracted after shaking hands with 20 uppity world leaders. Ennui mistaken for informed opinion of Kevin Rudd! War imminent!

I’m sorry, but do we really care?

No one really cared what Bush 'thought' at the best of times.

And with only a couple of months before he slips the keys to the White House under the mat and slinks off into history, I think the real story is, could this be any more irrelevant?

Hot, crowded and conflicted - must be the Newtown Festival!

2008-11-10T08:52:00.002+11:00

Yesterday, as the consumer palaces of the inner west echoed emptily, the free community festival of Newtown celebrated its 30th anniversary with record crowds and booming business.
Or anti-business, as the festival's director, Sue Andersen, put it. "The reason it's so unique and popular is, firstly, that it's free, but secondly, because it's not about consumer brands. One year we had a stall for [a large homewares concern], and people shunned it, like there was a big 'boo' over it. We realised it was a big mistake, and have never had a major brand since."

Full article here.

Well, a couple of observations, Sue Anderson:

My bottle of (tap) water was confiscated at the gate because “water is sold on-site. You can’t bring in any food or drink.”
Someone forgot to tell Sue Anderson that Fitness First, whose minions were wandering around spruiking their new Newtown venue, is a major consumer brand.

Apart from that, hooray for counterfeit Mighty Boosh t-shirts, fisherman’s pants and those teeny little pancake thingies.

Festivals, hurrah!

Australian Idol: les escargots ont interdit

2008-11-03T08:27:00.007+11:00

My top five observations from attending last night’s filming of the Australian Idol Top Five:

If there are 3 minutes and 40 seconds for each ad break, and allowing for 6 ad breaks, that means that Andrew G spent a cumulative 22 minutes fluffing and smoothing his fringe. Whilst other presenters/judges would spend the commercial breaks having a drink, chatting to the audience or having their make-up retouched, each and every spare second of Andrew G’s time was spent with the hair stylist. Why don’t they just save themselves the trouble and get him some lego hair.

I don’t understand how they make such a polished looking program from the big shemozzle that takes place in the studio during filming. It's like a 12-year old's birthday's party in someone's garage. Thanks goodness for unidirectional microphones I guess.

Everything in the studio is a lot smaller than it appears on TV (except Kyle). We were sitting in the third-last row of seats, but I reckon I could still have hit Luke Dickens fair in the face with an anvil, if I so chose.

Each of Andrew G and James Mathison had siblings in the audience last night. Not that this was announced. It was just rather obvious. Andrew G’s sister was pretty much Andrew G with ~~longer~~ bouncier hair and a dress. I only worked out that the bloke in the next aisle was not James Mathison, and was, in fact, his brother, when James Mathison walked out on stage in different clothes. It was freaky, people.

We dropped a friend home to Coogee at the end of the evening and drove past the Coogee Bay Hotel. The place was ~~faecal~~ packed. Go figure.

All poo puns intended

2008-10-30T08:37:00.002+11:00

Srsly, I do not want to read another word about the poolato incident at the Coogee Bay Hotel!

Everywhere I turn, there's yet another pointless 'update' - yet another quote from the 'victims' about how 'disgusted' they are.

Really?

You ate poo and you were disgusted? No!

People, this is not news!

I swear, we'll still be seeing 'updates' of this story next January.

In this month's bumper holiday edition of Women's Weekly - Belinda Neal's sensational new shaping underwear! Super-fun holiday knit patterns! Poo-eater Jessica Whyte's fail-safe teeth whitening revolution: "turn that brown frown upside down!"

A haiku

2008-10-22T13:11:00.001+11:00

Wooden Meares replaced
with Bonds girl Murdoch, is change
we can believe in

Fleeting thought for the day

2008-10-21T08:53:00.003+11:00

If the new Baz Luhrmann ~~self-congratulatory orgy of narcissistic jingoism~~ flick Australia will cost $130 million, and the new tax rebate offers producers 40% 'cash back guarantee', doesn't that mean the tax-payer is into this film for 52 million big ones?

That's an awful lot of episodes of the Religion Report, or the Media Report, or the Sports Factor...

Pointless nit-picking - perfect for Monday morning

2008-10-20T11:02:00.003+11:00

From today's online edition of the Australian.

Get with the program!

That logo was being used was when Qintex was solvent, Christopher Skase was breathing independently, A Country Practice was in production and Stan Grant was hosting Real Life!

fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again

2008-10-17T12:57:00.005+11:00

The Sarah Palin baby name generator.

The Sarah Palin answer generator.

The Sarah Palin quote generator.

Tina Fey.

Tina Fey.

Tina Fey.

This photo:

Sarah Palin herself.

All deeply hilarious and very good for alleviating the workday (provided you have perfected the art of silent, desk-based laughter).

But we use to think Bushisms were funny. I used to LOVE bushisms.

Surely, I thought, the fact that there is a brand of humour named after this man would be the ultimate sign of his unrelenting stupidity. But perhaps it was distracting – a coping mechanism when futile anger and fury became exhausting.

Is it possible the humour-element will prevent a proper appreciation of the frightening danger of Vice President Palin?

Yes, ~~Bush~~ she is funny. But ~~Bush~~ she is only funny because he she is breathtakingly, remorselessly, unfailingly unqualified.

And this is not an abstract debate - there is no shortage of examples to evidence the results of an unqualified leader at this time.

This is not the Fail blog

2008-10-13T19:36:00.004+11:00

If Australian Idol is a talent competition...

Just asking for some consistency

2008-10-10T08:32:00.002+11:00

Given this headline:

Shouldn't this headline:

be "Heterosexual man kills and grills heterosexual girlfriend" ?

2008-10-09T11:15:00.002+11:00

Coming up next on Rather Unfortunate Superglue Accidents, Caroline Overington tells of her struggle to continue as a sometimes-violent and reactionary blogger despite accidentally aralditing her right hand to the side of her head.

Spot the difference - US 2008 Presidential edition

2008-05-16T17:29:00.003+10:00

See here.

Is that cruel?

Ready to abrogate personal responsibility

2008-05-04T07:52:00.005+10:00

Dear Wayne

I hope Canberra is treating you well and that those hard-nuts at the Department of Finance and Deregulation aren’t beating up on your Treasury boys too often.

Just a quick note to let you know that your new tax on RTDs is both costly and ineffective.

Costly, because nightclubs have already whacked their prices up by about $4 a bottle, and not the “30c to $1.30” that would actually reflect the tax rise.

Ineffective because after about 5 beers I had entered into that headspace where the costs of drinks ‘duzzn’t madda!’ and so I had no regard for the subtle disincentive built into the pricing structure of the heinous and evil bottles of filth I was drinking.

Personally, I was relying on your new tax to make my drinking decisions for me, so I left my personal responsibility at home on Friday night (I don't like to carry too much stuff when I go out - makes my jeans pockets look too bulky).

So, not only is the government responsible for my decision to hit the binge hard, youse are also responsible for my decision to switch half-way through the night from beers to RTDs. Actually, wait, if you’ve taken the responsibility of dictating individual choices, maybe then it was YOUR decision that I should switch drinks.

Yeah!

Which means you guys should be picking up the tab for my wasted Saturday, in which I only got out of bed twice before 7pm – both times being failed attempts to drink the smallest amounts of water and keep them down.

There goes my 6-year no-throwing-up record. Thanks a lot!

I had a Saturday ‘to do list’ as long as my newly-tattooed arm. When my LovelyWife asks me why the car is still filthy and why the credit card isn’t balanced, I’m sending her to you.

And while you’re there I’m going to need you to go the gym, change the oil in my bike, pick up a present for mothers’ day and book my holiday accommodation for the end of the month.

Love,

Me.

Model behaviour

2008-04-15T19:32:00.004+10:00

I should keep a clipping of this article in my pocket for when people ask me what I've got against private schools receiving public funds.

Exemption from public standards of equality and legislated protections against discrimination, yet still entitled to public funds...

Not. Cool.

In other news, I have resigned myself to the fact that Ten won't be resuscitating Australian Princess (woe!) and have now reoriented my perverse attachment to girly reality shows towards the upcoming series of Australia's Next Top Model.

Without delving too deeply into this year's bundle of contestants...

...more disturbing than the fact the Alyce was born in the nineties, yet still resembles an adult (yes, I am in the midst of an age crisis), is that her 'secret weapon' will be to bust out a sneaky rendition of Whigfield's 1996 smash 'Sexy Eyes'.

Although, ANTM will have some pretty high standards to live up to, in terms of blogging fodder.

Kylie Booby still makes me snigger.

I'd pick Kylie as my date to a homophobic private school formal any day!

Neglect

2008-03-27T20:13:00.005+11:00

Apparently, this is called 'commuting'. Not too shabby.

Yes, in case anyone was wondering, we have made it to Sydney in one piece.

I just haven't quite worked out how to fit blogging in yet.

There's absolutely no way I can manage it at work and the idea of blogging in my own time is still somehow a bit perverse.

And then there was that whole 2-month battle with Optus just to get the frikkin' internet on (note to self, badmouth Optus at every opportunity).

Did I mention that Optus sucks? No?

Well they do. They suck balls.

If I'd had the time, I would have mostly been doing some stock standard, out of the box, formulaic blogging about recent fashion trends.

Ie, 'I saw le specs for sale the other day. Honest to goodness le specs! What's up with that?!'

And other sundry moaning about skinny-leg jeans and asymmetrical hair lines.

My other main griping activity has been focussed on the residents of the lower north shore suburb in which I work. I don't know how, but when I go up the road at lunch time to grab a $17 salad sandwich, I manage to feel underdressed in a suit.

There's just something about a gold faux suede rain coat in a 32 degree February day that is. not. right.

Oh, sorry, that should be pronounced 'raaahht'.

And that quiche will be 'twenty faaaahv dollaahhhs dahling'.

To get a coffee at the local cafe each morning, I have to wade through a mass of 5 year-olds in prep school uniforms picking up their babycino and vegemited sourdough.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad.

I'm bound to clean up sooner or later with a lucrative personal injury lawsuit. It's just a matter of time before one of the billions of luxury four wheel drives mounts the pavement and runs me down.

Quick update

2008-02-10T18:12:00.000+11:00

Unbelievably lucky with Sydney real estate - check.
Massive culture shock moving from public service to fiscally profligate private sector - check.
Wife secures transfer - check.
Passive aggressive signs at new workplace - check.
Spend more time commuting in one day than I used to in a week - check.
Never want to lift another box in my life - check.
Back in Canberra within 2 weeks for meetings with former colleagues - check.
3 week wait for internet and phone at new joint (not so good for blogging) - check.

Additional signage

2008-01-22T11:09:00.000+11:00

Well, today is my last day here in public service land.

*Feigned sob!*

What better way to mark the occasion than by wasting one last chunk of tax payer dollars by bludging off with a blog post! Stick that in your efficiency dividend, Lindsay Tanner!

Anyrate, this post isn't about that.

Insert seamless segue here

There are some really noble people in this world, dedicating their lives to worthy tasks. Take for example, those at the Office Sign Project.

After I attend to the more trifling and insignificant things on my 'to do' list (ie, moving house, etc), I might submit some examples from my portfolio of office sign photos.

In the meantime, enjoy these additional examples, sent to me by a (very) concerned citizen of public service land.

Wow - such a creative use of font colour and size! Sure to secure compliance!

F*ck - now I'm going to have to run yet another f*cking recruitment process. Knowing the public service, it will take 6 months and an unsuccessful fairy will appeal the decision to the public service commission.

Typical!

PS - While I think of it, thanks for all the suggestions of things to write on the preachy office signs from my previous post. I almost went one better the other day and punched the suspected author of the signs fair in the neck. I was attending to the very important and very work-related task of printing off colour copies of real estate listings when suspected-sign-author sprung me using the colour printer. In keeping with his vigilante-esque commitment to the proper use of office equipment and resources, he reacted as if I'd murdered some puppies or something - "do you absolutely HAVE to print in colour?" Yes, f*ck-face, I do! How else do you expect me to fill in the time in which I could be working and making things easier for my successor?!!?

It's a sign from God!

2008-01-10T15:56:00.000+11:00

We've spoken before about the preachy office sign.

And if you haven't already visited passive aggressive notes, well, beware lest I nail your feet to the floor and f*cking force you to (thanks! Have a great day!).

After careful consideration and some evidence-based analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the typical author of the preachy office sign is likely suffering from a kind of God-complex.

Convinced of the righteousness of their view of the world, not only do they deign to share this perspective, they seek to use their godly powers to persuade and control all those around them.

However, as the following evidence from my soon-to-be-ex-workplace attests, righteousness appears to translate all too often into a generally annoying and patronising smarminess:

Don’t get me wrong, I do like to close the fridge door and believe it is a fairly basic function not beyond the majority of the population.

But my reaction to this kind of unbearable smugness, were I to come across the author of this sign, would be to grab the nearest dinner plate, smash it over his head and yell “DERRR!!! Thanks for the tip, Hitler!”

Or, to quote Parker Posey in Best in Show: "What are you, some kind of WIZARD?!"

It must be tough though, to be so much smarter and funnier than everyone else. Always having the burden of pointing out others' flaws and suggesting humourous yet carefully insulting ways they can improve their lot. You just about hear the sighs of the author as he carefully penned this one:

The author was so obviously frustrated that his colleagues continued to shove both volumes of the White Pages into the shredder at once in spite of his previous entreaties, yet still took the time to draft his notice in a way that reminded us all how much less intelligence and wit we all have.

As for this last one:
It kinda makes you want to post your own preachy office sign. Something along the lines of:

"Alas, no amount of sickening pap or obviously unfunny goading has managed to convince your colleagues to conform themselves to your view of the world. Perhaps it is suprising to you but people don't tend to respond well to anonymous notes from patronising pricks, too cowardly to even put their name to their own notes. Now, leave us alone Thatcher!"

I think I'm going to miss the public service.

Just when you think your rut will run forever…

2008-01-02T16:22:00.000+11:00

In early December the wife and I finally decided to put our monies where our mouths are (our faces, presumably) and up-sticks back to Sydney, the land of reasonably priced café breakfasts, the Coogee women’s pool, lesbian soccer teams, endless beer gardens and oh, just about everything else I am fond of.

Many Canberra residents I know really quite like the place, and wish people (ie, me) would quit whinging and stop comparing it to Sydney. ‘You can’t expect it to be like Sydney’, they say. Well, we don't. We know it never can be Sydney. Which is precisely why we decided to move back.

To be fair, the place has been remarkably good to us, really. To offset the gaining of a translucent complexion and a 'winter coat', I went from a listless university graduate into a not entirely unsuccessful public servant, and did get quite accustomed to a 10-minute commute to work. It also turns out you meet some of the nicest people in Canberra, even if they are from Adelaide or Melbourne originally…

But there has to be more to life than an ability to nip home for a bowl of ice cream and a cat-patting session during my lunch hour, as good as that may be.

We set ourselves a 6-month timeframe for the move, perhaps assuming this would allow us enough time to carefully prise ourselves out of our comfy, comfy rut, without too much of a shock to the system. I sent my resume out to a few contacts and settled back, expecting to be applying for 50 bajillion jobs before anything really happened.

Just to highlight the yawning chasm (is there any other kind of chasm?) between the public sector, where any kind of recruitment action involves a bureaucratic circus of mammoth proportions (again, any other kind?) and takes about as long as human gestation, and the recruitment processes in the private sector, three days later I was asked to go to Sydney for an interview. One day after that, I was offered a job. And that same day, I accepted. And I will be starting in late January.

Shit!

Our plans for a carefully coordinated, blissful and stress-free interstate move are thus looking a little shakey. Plus, this means we’ll have to be doing yet another interstate move in high summer, which, let me tell you from experience, fucking sucks balls.

So our Christmas break has been a little more hectic than usual. Apart from the trifling task the lovely wife faces in finding a new job in about one-sixth of the time we had budgeted, there’s the logistics of finding a place and moving our mountains of crap up north.

I’ve been using the past week to go through the ample storage in our current place, finally facing the hard decisions on those items I had previously just chucked in and quickly slammed the door on, thinking “I’ll decide about that when we next move”.

I’m such a bastard to myself sometimes.

I have also been busily trying to decide which kidney I will sell on ebay as a means of raising the funds for bribing real estate agents. I live in fear of battling the Sydney rental market. It hasn’t helped that the papers have been full of horror stories about the lack of reasonably priced rental properties in Sydney, with people paying $1200 a week for a storage shed in what the real estate agents describe as ‘Newtown locality’ (read Zetland).

But it can’t be worse than my original quest for a rental apartment in Canberra in early 2003, one week after the bushfires. If the 50-strong queues forming outside properties 30 minutes before they opened for inspection weren’t bad enough, the real estate agents seemed to be giving preferences to families recently made homeless by the fires, the shifty bastards.

One of the problems we face is that we really, really like the place we are in now. It has just enough room not to feel small, but is not so big as to feel like we are taking up more than our fair share of the planet. There is plenty of storage (ok, this does encourage a little bit of hoarding, but mostly just piles of motorbike magazines), it is clean and in good shape, it is on a nice quiet street and has a number of nifty mod-cons (air-con, dishwasher, off-street parking, etc).

Suffice to say we have become very accustomed to these trappings of yuppie-dom.

The current thinking is that we are willing to sacrifice some of the mod-cons in exchange for a stereotypically charming renovated terrace/semi in a suitably lesbionic inner-west location. Which, judging from online real estate sites, is probably going to cost me not just a kidney, but half a liver as well.

Better cut down on the beers, maximise the value of the ole’ liver, eh?

So please, be in touch if you know of someone looking for a tenant. Or some vital organs, for that matter.

As for the job itself, well, no more wasting tax-payers money for me! I’m stepping out (or stumbling, whichever you think is most apt) into the ‘real world’ to sample a working life devoted to maximising profits and standing up for what the company owners believe in.

Sounds pretty good to me actually. Much less fraught than attempting to maintain a pretence of impartiality in a public service whose motto is increasingly ‘whatever it takes’.

I’m guessing that this will all mean that das blogging will take a little holiday while I sort out such things as a house, net access and my new employer’s acceptable computer usage policy…

Lucky for youse guys as there is a new season of American Idol coming up soon and I could feel some unnecessarily obsessive Idol posts brewing in the system.

But there is one last public service insanity post I am hoping to complete soon. It involves walking around at work shamelessly photographing certain items, so it might not get completed until after I’ve had my final entitlements signed off…

He's gonna get you when you are asleep...

2007-12-20T13:39:00.000+11:00

Michael Jackson scares me.

And not just in a ‘general displeasure with the excesses of celebrity and plastic surgery’ kinda way.

But in an ‘I can't stand to look at photos of him’ way.

He has managed to do all the right things to make his facial features inherently disturbing, in the same way that horror film directors design their villains with all-black eyeballs or grotesquely distorted features. The face being such an important visual reference that any kind of distortion instinctively puts a viewer on edge.

Unless of course they are post-its on his face – stuck there to remind him which bits are awful.

The festy season

2007-12-05T12:11:00.000+11:00

There are many ‘wrong’ things relating to Christmas and workplaces.

Tinsel draped over the photocopier in early November, motion-activated toys blaring tinny Christmas carols, flashing santa ear-rings, compulsory socialising, etc etc.

But the prize goes to the person in my group who organised our group Christmas lunch – Indian food, in the middle of the day, in 31 degree heat.

VOMIT!

No, literally, vomit.

And no, the fact that I merrily went ahead and ate the food does not transfer any responsibility for the situation to me.

Reasons to be cheerful - post-election series, installment #1

2007-11-26T08:31:00.000+11:00

1. Articles like this, make for very happy reading (shahd-n-froi-duh, huh).

A humiliated Karen Chijoff said her husband had left their home and she was no longer speaking to him [...] Another of Mr Howard's closest allies said the Prime Minister was the key problem. "The PM, they were just so over him. He looked old, they were sick of him," he said. "We could just see Howard couldn't win, and I could see that by March."

2. A deliberately barren Deputy PM!

3. Howard won't be appointing the next High Court judge.

4. Certain cretins certain to be removed from the ABC Board.

5. Everything Paul says here (love you Paul).

6. Bye bye Broughy, you really were a very dim operator. My favourite example, your refusal to consider sensible amendments to your NT Emergency Response legislation because you didn't like "complicated processes or amendments to Bills".

7. International headlines such as "Bush loses a friend in Australia"

*Contented sigh*

For any undecided nit-picking voters out there...

2007-11-21T10:47:00.001+11:00

From the Liberal Party's policies web page, here's all you need to know in order to decide who to vote for:

Can't even spell Tasmania. What a scandal.

They'd better hope the electors of Braddon and Bass are reasonably open-minded and forgiving types.

Keeping busy

2007-11-19T15:18:00.000+11:00

Two things I have decided are ‘not ok in the workplace’ and which I will be raising with Lindsay Tanner and his razor-gang as suitable targets in his planned shake-up of the public-service:

1. Complete strangers (normally in the lift - captive audience, you see) asking “how are you going today?” soley for the purposes of eliciting the polite reciprocation of that question (ie, “fine thanks, how are you?”) so that they can go on and on AND ON at length about their dodgy leg/ankles/heart/frontal lobe.

Not cool!

2. The pairing of a purple skirt-suit and beige crocs (with beige stockings!).

Not cool!

(Not me!)

Heaven07 – my election-themed biking adventure

2007-11-14T16:58:00.000+11:00

I guess it is the modern equivalent of the slide-show - foisting my holiday snaps on my unsuspecting readers.

But in this instance, you can simply click yourself away to another exciting intertubes destination. Unlike the slide-shows I remember, which always seem to involve locked doors and hours of lost time...

Anyway, on with the show eh?

As Antony Green tells us, the electorate of Eden-Monaro, currently held by Gary Nairn for the Libs by 3.3% is a varied electorate covering 37,619 sq.km in the south-east corner of NSW. It includes the fishing, holiday and retirement towns of Narooma and Bermagui, rich agricultural areas around Bega, logging towns around Eden and Bombala, Cooma and the NSW snowfields, Queanbeyan and the Canberra overflow, as well as Tumut and Tumburumba in the the upper reaches of the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers. It is also famous for being the classic 'litmus test' seat, Eden-Monaro has fallen to the party that won government at every election since 1972.

But what Antony doesn’t mention are the rich road-based delights it has to offer for the two-wheeled voter. The other week I spent a cumulative three days exploring the best and worst of riding in this ‘litmus test’ seat.

Here's day one:

Started off with a very easy run down to Bateman’s Bay. The run from BB to Bega was in all honesty some of the suckiest riding I’ve ever done. The scenery is pretty magnificent, but in terms of riding, it absolutely sucked balls.

Apart from lacking anything really interesting in riding terms, it was packed out with caravans, there were road works every 15 minutes (no one likes sitting in full gear on a 30 degree day in the sun for 30 minutes) and the wind was pure arse-suckery.

Not only was it pushing me regularly onto the wrong side of the road, it almost pushed me off a few times around corners and was blowing grit and leaves into my eyes. Not fun.

So blind, drenched in sweat and physically exhausted from clinging to the bike for 2 hours I collapsed down next to the bike in Bega. Lo and behold, I’d picked up a hitch-hiker in the form of a fairly reasonably sized stick, wedged into my rear suspension and gouging a groove into my rear tyre.

I still can’t believe I hadn’t felt or heard anything. Perhaps if the wind wasn’t howling like a banshee in my helmet I may have heard some kind of rubbing or vibration noise. Who knows how long it had been there.

With the riding being so annoying from then on I lowered my expectations and reverted to sight-seeing mode, which was probably not a bad idea as that part of NSW is exceedingly pretty.

All the beaches seemed to have tropical blue water and with recent rains, the green countryside was a sight for sore eyes in comparison to the brown and grey barren hills around Canberra.

So I started taking little detours and just took it a bit easy and enjoyed myself a lot more.

A friend had recommended I stay overnight in Mallacoota. I previously had no awareness of this part of Victoria, but I recommend it to anyone. A real wildnernessy feeling about it, and for most of the time I spent on the roads after Eden, I barely saw a soul. None of the towns feel overtly touristy and the roads are in very good condition.

The next morning I got away nice and early determined to have a better time of it riding-wise.

Here's day 2:

I was soon at Cann River and the Cann Valley Highway lay before me.

I have found the key to my soul.

Those 80-odd kilometres of pure zen sweepers are the new Buddhism.

Fwoar. The sight-lines go on forever. The road surface is sublime. The scenery is amazing and I probably only saw 2 or 3 other cars.

Bliss.

From then on, things did get a bit slabby and boring (also, riding behind timber trucks sure does suck, with all the splinters and crap blowing up into the helmet and into my eyes). However, all too soon I was back in Canberra and my first ever solo overnight bike adventure was at an end.

I couldn’t stay off the bike for long though, and a day later I was back on the Monaro Highway heading for Cooma, Jindabyne and beyond:

Yes, that is snow.

My first trip down into the snowies and omgwtfbbq! The roads are amazing! Shame I already used up my Buddhism analogy.

Whilst I didn’t have nearly enough time down there, I’d have to say those roads have a few Ben Cousins-like features – easy on the eye, high-performing and somewhat addictive! I spent most of my time on the road out to Khancoban and even though I’d done my planned trip out there once, I got back to Thredbo and had to turn around and do it again!

This meant I got home quite late and was aching all over, but I didn’t care.

I spent most of that evening with a silly looking grin on my face. I don’t know what it was but during that ride everything seemed to click and I was finding myself nailing corners in a way I don’t usually manage on a consistent basis – especially not unfamiliar downhill hairpins!

I’m in no way the world’s best rider, but it felt like easily my best ever riding.

But sigh, back to reality now. All I can do is start planning the next ride!

Things to do differently next time:

Blow up the Monaro between Canberra and Cooma
Brown Mountain and Mt Darragh Rd
Allow myself an overnight stay in the snowies and get all the way around the loop up to Kiandra and Adaminaby.
Get hard luggage so I don’t have to lug a tank bag everywhere each time I get off the bike
Avoid buying petrol in Thredbo - $1.55 per litre? Get fugged.

C'mon Matt, take off your jacket...

2007-11-12T13:52:00.000+11:00

...so we can play another game of Idol spot-the-difference!

This time between Kisschasy's Spray-on Pants zombies, and your outfit last night!

But no, you had to ruin it didn't you, with that anoraky thingy. But I know you had a stripey t-shirt on underneath. Corr, what a good blog-post that would have made...

And yes, this was the most exciting thing to come out of last night's episode, thanks very much.

PS All credit to the LovelyWife for the cross-cultural observations in this post...

Memo to world's biggest loser:

2007-11-09T09:06:00.000+11:00

SHUT UP you insufferable disaster!

Four on the floor

2007-11-05T12:54:00.000+11:00

Dear Australian Idol,

Whilst this final four does come across as a bit of a joke, I want you to know it is NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.

But, I am prepared to be patient. I just know that any minute now, the real finalists are going to jump out from behind the couch and surprise us all. You know, the finalists who can sing and who are at least partly interesting...

Let's face it, 25% of your final four comprises a one-man tribute band to Michael Buble (who himself, is pretty much a one-man tribute band to original artists - so Carl, you are doubly unoriginal), and as we all know, tribute bands belong at the Revesby Workers Club or the Epping Hotel, and not on national telly!

Quite frankly, I preferred your earlier attempts at humour.

And could you please pass a message on to the ~~work experience hair and make-up TAFE students~~ 'Confidence team' stylists - having the filthiest of the finalists shower in the kitchen sink is ~~likely to score you an 'F' on your final TAFE exam~~ exceedingly inadequate.

The caption reads "Marty skips the shower and gives his hair a quick rinse".

But perhaps that just fits in with this year's theme - 'Australian Idol 2007 - really quite disappointing'.

Yours sincerely

Previously gruntled viewer

While y'all working this week...

2007-10-28T15:57:00.000+11:00

Time for me to p1ss off on my bike for a few days.

Ta ta!

I still heart Emily

2007-10-22T20:41:00.000+10:00

Tonight's Idol verdict show performance by the Young Divas (-Ricky Lee, +Jessica Mauboy, but still, thankfully, retaining Emily) only served to highlight how hopelessly talentless the current group of godforsaken finalists are.

Not a single finalist from this year's show can sing even half as well as the worst Young Diva on an off night, smoking a cigar and gargling the chorus of 'Achy Breaky Heart' with a mouth full of bourbon.

I think it must be time for another lolCarl.

Fresh thinking my arse

2007-10-18T09:35:00.000+10:00

First it was pollies ripping off lolcats.

Now it's pollies ripping off the infinite cat project!

Get your own ideas and stop ripping off teh kittez!

Tax-cuts for all (straight people)

2007-10-16T10:52:00.000+10:00

Of all the piss-weak, pathetic excuses trundled out by this Government for its failure to act on legislated discrimination against teh gays, the one that has always annoyed me most is the line that it would be 'too expensive'.

This is the idea that in providing equal access to tax-breaks and superannuation benefits, the revenue foregone would send the country crashing into bankruptcy.

In my ~~admittedly hysterical~~ mind, the revenue we are talking about is roughly equivalent with proceeds of crime. A windfall gain for the government sourced from the deliberate maintenance of unjust measures imposed on its citizens should not be put in the same column as general taxation revenue.

Ie, you f*ckers shouldn't be collecting that money in the first place, so don't start whinging about losing it!

This article reckons the cost to government would be about $2 billion (not clear over how long).

Seems like a lot, huh.

I just know that the boffins in the Department of Finance and Administration (DoFA - or, if you prefer, "Do F*ck All") have searched high and low, desperately trying to find the money to get the government out of this heart-breaking quandry.

But I guess they should have looked in that big barrel of hoarded surplus marked "100% pure pork".

Seems $34 billion is much easier to find than a mere $2 billion, sometimes.

Christmas has come early

2007-10-14T14:04:00.000+10:00

A November 24 election equals a six-week election campaign, equals a six-week caretaker period!

On behalf of public servants everywhere, thanks John! Six weeks of filing and long-lunches.

And after all those things I said about you...

Man, I am going to have the tidiest desk.

While I'm here, some sites to satisfy your inner psephite:
Possum
Mumble
Bludger
Oz

Just shut-up and lose already.

2007-10-11T13:36:00.000+10:00

Image digitally enhanced. Your PM doesn't actually look this good.

The current fuss is about whether Parliament will sit next week, with K-Rudd blathering on about waste of tax-payers' dollars if the MPs fly in for a week of pointless sittings.

Apparently businesses want it out of the way soon too, so that the hoards are not distracted from the sacred annual ritual of emptying wallets and savings accounts in celebration of the birth of Christ.

My general reaction was "Meh".

But then I learnt that Aussie's (Parliament House 'cafe') doesn't know how much milk to order for next week.

It's clearly time to end the madness and uncertainty.

Just call the bloody thing and let us spank your botty good and proper, John.

Important and complex psephological post

2007-10-09T14:30:00.000+10:00

Will Siamese twins get to vote twice at the upcoming election?

This is in really poor taste, isn't it.

Sorry, slow day.

Informed dietary choices

2007-10-03T12:26:00.000+10:00

I overheard the following during a recent visit to the local ~~trough~~ 'reasonably priced cafe'.

Woman ordering from bain-marie: "I'll have the prawn and snow-pea stir fry thanks. But no rice! Oh God, rice is sooooo unbelievably bad for you. All those carbs. Yuck! No thanks...... Better also give me a spring roll.... No, make that two."

Product review - 21st century Idol analysis

2007-10-01T14:47:00.000+10:00

If you believe what you hear, you’d think that GPS navigation devices or LCD TVs are the ‘must-have’ consumer electronics appliances at the moment.

Well, I’ve got an inside tip on what’s bound to be on everyone’s Christmas wish list this year – the Megatron4000 Electric Idol-Alike Easy-Compare Oven.

It's as nifty as it sounds, my friends.

You enter in the key characteristics of this year’s Australian Idol contestants and the Idol-Alike Easy-Compare Oven will spit out the Idol finalist from previous years they most resemble. In so doing, it fills a gaping hole in the market for automated Idol analysis.

I was provided with a demonstration model during last night's episode of Idol, for the purposes of this review, and let me tell you, the Easy-Compare Oven is a very handy addition to a viewer's suite of critiquing options.

To demonstrate, let’s enter in the key profile data for Carl Risely.

Vocal talent = -40
Originality = -50
General understanding of music beyond genre of choice = -30
Flexibility as an ‘artist’ = -15
Mediocrity = +100

Plus, following his rendition of ‘Clocks’ on Rock night, the manual tells me I have to factor in an unknown amount of the Daniel Belle variable.

And, voila!

A 98% match for 2005’s Lee Harding, described by the Idol-Alike Easy-Compare Oven in scientific terms as belonging to the genus “uno-trickus equinus”, or, in the detailed description as a “sick joke that went on far too long enough by half, resulting in arguably the world’s worst pop single (Wasabi)."

Touche.

Let’s play again, this time with Jacob Butler.

The Idol-Alike Easy-Compare Oven is quite flexible in the kinds of data you can enter, so we’ll go for some different categories of information this time.

Tendency to pull annoying facial expressions while singing = +60
Vocal talent = -30
General ‘bland’/forgettable factor = +50

This time we get a 65% match for 2004’s Marty Worrall, whose ugly singing face, the Easy-Compare Oven tells us, was thought to be responsible for a number of otherwise unexplained television explosions around the country at the time.

Thanks to its constant WAPGPRS3Gtooth connection to the Binternets, the Easy-Compare Oven can keep up to date with the most recent Idol info, and so includes interesting fact snippets, like, in this instance, the fact that both Marty and Jacob have butchered “Somewhere Only We Know”.

Must-have info.

My last test-run involved Marty Simpson, and this scenario seemed to throw up an interesting glitch in the machine.

I entered in the data as per usual:

General air of grubbiness = +30
Tendency to shuffle about and mumble = +40

I expected to maybe get a 30% Dan England match, but instead I got this:

Not strictly speaking an Australian Idol finalist, but still, eerily close.

Before finishing up with the Easy-Compare Oven, I tried out one of its special features, the optional Schadenfreude add-on.

This is where you input the key characteristics of any chosen 2007 finalist and the Easy-Compare Oven cleverly assesses the level of disdain you have for that finalist.

Based on that assessment, the Easy-Compare Oven spits out a similarly droll past Idol finalist. Importantly though, the Easy-Compare Oven only selects those past Idol finalists whose exit from the show was suitably undignified and gleefully timely, to give you hope that a similar fate will befall the 2007 finalist.

So, taking the talentless, shouty, nut-job Tarasai Vushe:

Yawning schism between self-confidence and actual talent level = +100
General mania and detachment from reality = +75
Absence of vocal ability masked by predictable glory-noting and superfluous key-changes = +50

And the Schadenfreude result is:

Ouch.

Fingers crossed it turns out to be accurate.

Overall, I give the Megatron4000 Electric Idol-Alike Easy-Compare Oven 7/10.

Accurate enough to be entertaining, but not yet as effective an Idol critique tool as yelling at the telly and texting “wtf? I fucking hate Carl!” to your friends.

It's a LolCarl!

2007-09-26T10:27:00.000+10:00

No idea what I'm talking about? Context.

Poll Pole position

2007-09-19T13:58:00.000+10:00

A tale of two Aussie underdogs, charging towards certain victory…

Young ~~Kevin~~ Casey has been followed closely by many ~~commentators~~ fans as he worked his way up through the ~~Department of Foreign Affairs~~ 250cc championship and then a ~~high-profile stint as foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition~~ debut season in the premier class of motorcyle racing, MotoGP, which featured a few spectacular learning curves.

Promoted to the ~~leadership~~ front-running Ducati team for this year, ~~Kevin~~ Casey surprised everyone leaping to the top of the ~~polls~~ standings with early ~~popularity gains~~ wins on the clearly dominant Ducati machine.

It was at this stage that ~~the Government~~ his detractors and rivals attributed ~~Kevin's~~ Casey's success to the ~~honeymoon effect~~ extra top-speed the Ducati had compared to rival machines.

But he kept on ~~delivering positive polling results~~ winning, with victories in Qatar, Shanghai and Instanbul.

Then ~~the press~~ his detractors claimed that once the ~~Budget was delivered~~ Moto GP circus moved to the tight, twisty European circuits, which lacked the long straights on which the Ducati had shown early-season dominance in Qatar, Shanghai and Instanbul – then ~~the Government would receive a massive poll bounce~~ Casey would succumb to the more talented and technically proficient riders.

But they were wrong, as ~~Kevin’s continued rise as preferred PM~~ Casey's stunning victory in Catalunya, backed up next round at a very wet Donnington Park demonstrated.

Still his detractors insisted he would ~~suffer from scandalous revelations about his past~~ fall behind, run out of fitness and get complacent. But ~~poll~~ race after ~~poll~~ race, he piled on the points.

Coming into this last weekend, there were great expectations that a positive ~~poll~~ result would see ~~Kevin's~~ Casey's rivals lose their nerve ~~and call an early poll~~ and allow him to run away with the ~~victory~~ Championship.

After all, the previous race, in Misano, had seen ~~4-time election winner~~ 7-time world champion and current ~~electoral~~ championship rival ~~John Howard~~ Valentino Rossi suffer a complete ~~brain~~ engine failure causing him to ~~announce his retirement in the next term~~ retire from the race.

Everyone had expected ~~Howard~~ Rossi to claw back some points after the ~~APEC Leaders’ week~~ introduction of pneumatic valves to his Yamaha YZR M1's engine. Add to this that ~~Kevin~~ Casey had piled on a massive ~~19-point 2 party preferred Newspoll lead~~ 85-point championship lead and it seemed like the ~~election~~ championship was in the bag.

But, over the weekend, some stunning ~~Newspoll results~~ improvements from Valentino’s Yamaha led to a ~~bout of crowing~~ thrilling win for ~~Kevin's~~ Casey’s main rival.

This led to fervent speculation that ~~the election~~ Casey's ultimate victory would be delayed until after the next ~~sittings~~ round in Motegi, this weekend.

But ~~Kevin~~ Casey still commands a ~~10-point 2 party preferred lead~~ 76-point championship lead with only 3 races to go.

Surely now we can prepare the ground for ~~Kevin's~~ Casey's triumphant arrival at ~~the Lodge~~ the Australian GP at Phillip Island in October as ~~super-duper PM~~ World Champion 2007?

Although history sounds a cautionary note for ~~Kevin~~ Casey. Who could foreget when in ~~2001~~ the ~~Opposition leader at the time~~ championship leader Nicky Hayden looked destined for victory only for ~~that effing Tampa boat to float into Australia's waters~~ his team mate to spectacularly take him out of the race!

Millions wait in anticipation!

Fear and loathing

2007-09-18T12:41:00.000+10:00

I came to a sobering realisation last night.

Despite all my fretful, paranoid self-chastisement upon each and every optimistic thought.

Despite the hours spent going back over old news articles and blog posts from October 2004, in an attempt to re-live the sting and despair.

Despite the analysis of the ‘softness’ of the current polls, which should really have brought me back down to earth.

I admit it.

I have gotten my hopes up.

"Yeah baby! This thing is in the bag! Nothing could possibly go wrong now!"

I guess it might seem like there is nothing wrong with this.

But the dreadful depression that followed the 2004 result was, I think, made so much worse by the fact that I had somehow deluded myself into thinking there was a chance of ALP victory.

"Wow, you really ARE stupid, aren't you?"

And can you imagine how much worse it would be this time?

There’s such a feeling around the place that a change is a foregone conclusion, any victory for the Government will be doubly revolting. The crowing and bleating will just be unbearable.

A coaching suggestion made to football teams that have won the minor premiership and are facing the prospect of complacency in the finals series is that they should carry a brick around with them at all times.

Having used all my spare bricks for throwing off the overpass at 4WDs, maybe I should stick this photo up at my desk, to bring me back down to earth.

But people might get the wrong idea.

It is for these reasons I am undecided about whether attending any election parties is a good idea.

Who can forget 2004 when it was all freaking over before the party pies had even defrosted?

I guess, in the end, defeat is defeat and I am just deluding myself even further if I think I can mentally prepare for that outcome.

I'll have to come up with some way of coping. I think I'll choose....crack-smoking!

"Congratulations girlfriend. You worked it out."

Seems to be all the rage these days.

The least they could do is call the bloody election. I've been doing the slow hand-clap for about a month now but it doesn't seem to have worked.

At the moment it's like peeling off a really sticky band-aid, reeeeealllly slowly. Just rip the fucker right-off, Johnny!

"Nah, fuck ya!"

Yeah, well. The feeling's mutual, fuck-face.

2007-09-17T16:19:00.000+10:00

Oh dear.

I went and ~~missed~~ failed to watch Idol last night.

Pretence of woe, teeth-gnashing, etc.

(Just because I really do love a pun) Last night staying home to watch Idol lost out to going out to watch a performance by my idol.

I finally saw Tori Amos live in concert, leaving me with a much shortened list of things I must do before dying.

Holy. Heck.

What monstrously talented and straight-out amazing performer. Topped off by a sequinned American flag asymmetrical jumpsuit and incredibly rare live performance of Me and a Gun.

I was in Tori-fan heaven.

Words are failing me, so I'm just going to go off to the side here and drool and sigh for a little while.

.

Uber-sigh.

But, I know y'all didn't come here for the fawning.

Y'all are after some good-old fashioned, mindless and not at all well-informed hatin'.

The good news there is that I did manage to see Carl Risely’s performance before leaving home last night.

After witnessing him vomit up Coldplay's Clocks (this is 'rock', how?), there'll no doubt be some Carl-apologists saying in his defence that night’s theme of ‘rock’ clearly doesn’t fit his performance style.

News flash! There will only ever be one night that fits his performance style! And that's if the producers choose to have a banal-swing-pap night this year! Finger crossed.

Speaking of those fine, genius producers at Idol, kudos for choosing last night’s show to launch the new product tie-in with Head & Shoulders.

Nothing says ‘rock ‘n roll’ like anti-dandruff shampoo.

Poll dive

2007-09-10T19:30:00.000+10:00

Recently leaked Crosby-Textor analysis has revealed the following reasons ~~the electorate~~ I despise Carl Risely:

The hat
The song
The complete lack of talent
The hat
The artless mimicking of my mortal enemy, Michael Buble
The rancid jingoism and exploitation of being in the Navy (you play a freaking trumpet, you retard!)
The hat

Also, Carl, when asked why you chose Waltzing Matilda did you have to say “because I’m Aussie”?

I mean, I never would have guessed you are. Not with the show being called FRICKIN’ AUSTRALIAN IDOL or anything.

But, obviously, Carl thinks this says something about his personality. And, despite the obvious point that highlighting an attribute that is common to about 20 million people shouldn’t suffice as a means of distinguishing yourself amongst a group of 12 people, I think it does say something about his personality.

Pictorially, some other people happy to select "Aussieness" as a defining characteristic:

'Nuff said, Carl.

Most money spent on advertisements, evah!

2007-09-06T15:04:00.000+10:00

The real joy of having 653 trillion television channels (c/o Foxtel), is not so much that I have now multiplied by 653 trillion times the odds that I’ll be able to watch back to back Hogan’s Heroes at any given time on any given day.

Rather, it is that I will truly be getting value for my tax-dollar through maximum exposure to all those useful ‘government information campaigns’ (certainly never to be referred to as ‘political advertisements').

There’s the very useful ‘NetAlert’ advertisements, featuring an endless supply of young children with computer monitors for faces.

The waiting list for elective plastic surgery is truly shocking

And, just so you know, we have been able to have several, very constructive conversations with Tobias about drugs, thanks to the helpful hints in the government information campaign on drugs. Tobias now knows how hurtful he can be when he is coming down off catnip. And how stealing my Christmas savings to buy liver-treats is not cool.

I sleep well at night knowing that he is no longer at risk of selling his body on the street for drug money.

There's also the 'Know where you stand' campaign:

I particularly like how the slogan features on a post-it note. Post-its are normally used as reminders, so it makes sense. As in "must stick a post-it note up at my desk to remind me to calculate how much worse off I'll be under an AWA".

Or perhaps it is a representation of how much standing the advertisement's promises have in the event I do end up worse off under an AWA. As in "Oh, those promises about protecting your rights didn't mean anything. They were only ever on a post-it."

However, by far the most prominent of the ‘information campaigns’ would have to be the television advertisements ‘informing us’ of “Biggest reforms to superannuation, evah”.

Joe, the 53 year-old soon-to-retire hardware merchant, who’ll now be able to draw upon his superannuation tax-free, keeps popping up all over the joint. Just today, I saw him wedged between double-entendres on Will & Grace, propping up the Nuremburg Trials on the History Channel, and catching the bouquet at the end of Bridezillas (I’m off sick, so I have been able to sample the full range of delights offered by modern culture today).

Not so prominent, but equally memorable, is Julie, a receptionist at a medical centre, who doesn’t yet want to retire, but would like to cut back her work to three-days a week.

Both 'campaings' feature comforting, non-confrontational scenes of very ordinary Australians getting on with life in a completely non-fussed, contented way. Real ‘relaxed and comfortable’ type stuff, and something we can only expect to see more of as the Government attempts to build a platform of perceived prosperity upon which to launch massive scare campaigns (flesh eating unionists, the ALP killed Princess Diana, Kevin Rudd eats baby seals, etc etc).

All I can think of though is Joe, the 53-year old former hardware merchant, who had to close his small suburban hardware business when a Bunnings opened up nearby, completely undercutting his profit margins with massive loss-leading discounts. Joe, who had planned to retire at 53, lost a bundle trying to stay in business and now works 10-hours a day 6-days a week as a casual at that Bunnings, selling cheap, $15 electric drills and dangerously sub-standard electrical fittings. He'll have to work until he is 67 in order to cover the loss of savings incurred when his business went under.

Or Julie, who does work 3 days a week at the local medical centre, but spends it processing invoices for medical consultations charged at twice the AMA rate (with no bulk billing) and turning away those people who can’t pay up front (even if they are oozing strange substances or barely able to walk). She’s become quite good at getting through to people who are in considerable pain and discomfort, to communicate to them exactly which local buses (which run 2-hourly) will drop you off near the emergency department of the nearest public hospital, 35 minutes away.

But obviously, I am mis-thinking. I haven’t been paying enough attention to the ‘information campaigns’, which explicitly tell me that ‘everything is fine’ and we’re all going to be perfectly happy just as long as we have an ~~over-taxing government that tries to convince us we are lucky when they sell us back our own money rather than spend it on services~~ extra $14 a fortnight in tax-cuts.

Must get back to the TV.

2007-09-04T12:15:00.001+10:00

If only one-trick ponies were falling foul of the current bout of horse-sniffles (zing, etc etc).

Carl Riseley - Really looking forward to Emo night

The real tragedy of the canning of the Midday Show is that without a natural home, these middle of the road, personality-free-zone crooners are popping up all over the joint on Australian idol.

Carl Riseley - you bring shame on our roughly corresponding names.

Statistical breakdown of my reaction to Idol this year so far:

Apathy - 25%
Middling levels of disappointment mixed with apathy - 45%
Uncontrollable gas - 10%
Continuing hatred of Marcia - 5%
Personal disappointment with how things turned out with Husny - 5%
Allergic reaction to Daniel Mifsud - 10%

2007-08-29T19:37:00.000+10:00

In America, I'm pretty sure teh kids get a decent edumacation in civics.

You know, ~~electrical~~ electoral systems and the value of the vote, etc etc.

And even here in Australia, there are ads and campaigns trying to get the message through - your vote is precious. Don't waste it! Etc etc.

Doesn't appear to be working though.

People just keep throwing their votes away, like any old piece of garbage.

A result so wrong, she almost got eye-gouged.

Yes, we know your mouth is the new Belconnen Bus Interchange ('Cor, you could drive a bus through that!' Boom-tish, etc etc)

When will people learn? Democracy, just doesn't work.

That's personal

2007-08-28T19:49:00.000+10:00

Me: What is this bint wearing?

LovelyWife: A giant dunny roll coming away from itself.

Werd.

Speaking of toilet paper, anyone else get one of these numbers in the post today?

Useful stuff. We were wondering how we were going to talk to Tobias about drugs.

Thanks, Prime Minister.

Top 24 what, exactly? Mouth breathers?

2007-08-21T16:25:00.000+10:00

Dear Daniel,

People are starting to notice that you are always wearing a scarf. The same scarf in fact. In every single scene you appear in.

My money's on a tracheotomy scar but I do welcome any attempt you make to cover up your abundant man-fur.

PS - Instead of relying on a scarf as a trademark representation of your 'individuality', why not try some personality instead?

I'm a real big fan of Noel Fielding, so it is great to see him reprise his Vince Noir character for this series of Idol. Check out the circumference on that hair. King of the mods!

Ben, your parents must be very glad they made the decision to raise you as a boy. Your girlish features and squeaky voice are certainly not a dead giveaway of your hermaphroditic roots - nuh-uh, not a bit, ~~girlfriend~~.

Yaaa--aaa---wwww--nnn.

There's enough entertainment value in this photo alone to justify Brianna's inclusion in the Top 24, but she also provided a few belly-laughs last night with lines such as "I'm quirky and different and I want to share that with the world."

I can't decide whether she'll bomb out of the competition following a 'kooky' rendition of an INXS song, or following a butchering of a Bjork song. The future holds so many enticing possibilities.

It is clear though that Marcia is already cultivating a wicked hatred of Brianna - if I had one of those clever televisions that knew automatically which parts of Idol I would like to blog about, and then took a screen-shot, and then sent it to my computer, then I would be able to include a picture of Marcia's face after telling Brianna she had made it to the Top 24.

But I don't.

So you'll just have to imagine it - think of how Marcia might look if she was attempting to shit a brick. That should do it.

Looks who is effluent now.

2007-08-20T16:42:00.000+10:00

"The first [ad] break doesn't come until about 10 minutes in and they don't feel too intrusive to us because the story really gets under way."

Oh bollox.

You know, you could have just said "Seven offered us $6 million" and that's all the justification I would need to hear for the move from the ABC. This kind of poxy justification for the incorporation of advertisements into the show is more than nauseating.

In any event, be sure to keep your shark-jumping detection kit handy...

Oh that's right, I have a blog

2007-08-12T17:28:00.000+10:00

Meaningless things from my life you've missed hearing about lately:

The woman, a full-time employee, in the LovelyWife's team at work who said she wasn't going to be at work the next day because she "wasn't available that day" (how do people get away with crepe like that?!);
The woman who lives across the road from my parents has named her daughter "Emmasyn";
The woman at the LovelyWife's work who spent a morning randomly touching fellow employees with her new, vibrating "OH&S hand splint", that she bought at Fyshwick;
I will never tire of the the audition phase of Idol; and
The other day my need for caffeine completely overtook my principles and I bought a coffee from these shmucks, who we all know are in bed with these rabid oxygen-thieves. I feel very dirty. If I can't maintain pointless protests through meaningless product boycotts, what do I have left to live for?

And the Nobel Prize for Chavism goes to...

2007-07-26T19:26:00.000+10:00

I know, I know - but this picture is apt. It shows where the baby came from...

Proud parents Jordan and Peter Andre have landed their new child with a mouthful of a moniker . . . PRINCESS TIAAMII.

They chose the barmy name - pronounced tee-ah-me - as a tribute to their parents.

Andre's mother is called Thea, while Jordan's mother's name is Amy.

As the LovelyWife notes, looks a little bit like an insurance company acronym. No child should be burdened with that many superfluous vowels.

How many more of these name-crimes must we endure before a UN resolution is passed requiring worldwide adoption of the Hungarian and Danish approach of instituting an official list of baby names?!?!

Won't someone please think of the children!

Closer to home:

I honestly don't know which is worse.

Out of office

2007-07-17T09:27:00.001+10:00

I ~~don't give a crap about your email~~ am currently out of the office.

I will ~~ignore~~ respond to your ~~timewasting hassle~~ email when I return ~~with post-holiday depression so bad I'll likely just delete your email straight away~~.

If the matter is ~~something you've kindly left to the last minute~~ urgent, please contact anyone but me and they will hopefully repay your kindness in coming to us at the last minute with a half-baked response sent exactly 5 minutes after the point at which we were so late with our response, you could no longer use it.

A post about my cat? Surely I jest.

2007-07-15T16:17:00.000+10:00

To celebrate our first anniversary with Tobias, a pictorial tribute.

Simpsons me, Simpsons you

2007-07-11T13:56:00.000+10:00

If only my posture were this good in real life

A worthy distraction in your day - create yourself as a Simpsons character.

That's my Christmas shopping done

2007-07-06T10:46:00.000+10:00

I don’t know how common this is, but in my office we are lucky enough to have a ‘book club’ – a display of books for sale on the counter near the tea room. Must be the stuff they can’t even sell at those “All Books 50c” sales they hold in disused industrial estates.

Oh, and it's not just books. Our office is now a clearing house for $20 jewellery and children’s toys so flammable they catch fire if the heating is on too high.

Stuff that is clearly so obscure or poorly made, it would never find a home on the shelves of retail outlets.

You know the kind of thing – 151 delicious terrine recipes, Witchcraft for you at home, or a "3 in one measuring tape, pocket torch and infant thermometer".

Anyway, that’s not the point. I don’t even have to make the point.

The following pictures of one of the products, speak for themselves.

Looks harmless enough...

Kangaroos and Uluru...

Oh. I see. Classy.

It's like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is a knife

2007-06-29T12:57:00.000+10:00

PM reads message generated from the Irony-tron 5000 irony-generating machine, wearing a "Choose Irony" t-shirt, on World Irony Day, and still fails to see any irony:

Prime Minister John Howard has ruled out Prince William as a future governor-general of Australia, saying only a long term and permanent citizen would be acceptable.

Just between you and me, given the expression on the old fella's face, I'm kinda glad this picture does not extend below the waistline.

And as for William, sod-off and get a proper job.

58 federal laws....

2007-06-28T08:40:00.000+10:00

I think I'm going to have another one of those days today where I can't quite get motivated to work very hard for the gummint...

The 58 federal laws in Appendix 1 discriminate against same-sex couples in the area of financial and work-related entitlements. Those laws breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Yeah, I reckon I'll take it real easy today. That'll really make 'em think twice about persistent breaches of basic human rights.

All persons are equal before the law and
are entitled without any discrimination
to the equal protection of the law. In
this respect, the law shall prohibit any
discrimination and guarantee to all persons
equal and effective protection against
discrimination on any ground...

Article 26, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

This will either cheer you up immensely

2007-06-27T20:25:00.000+10:00

...or make you somewhat nauseous.

Those poor ladies.

Random crap from my camera-phone

2007-06-27T12:59:00.000+10:00

Friday frosted log

2007-06-22T08:24:00.000+10:00

I said, brrrrrrrr.

Really, really random stuff

2007-06-20T13:19:00.000+10:00

Been spending a lot of time up at ‘da House’ lately.

I seem to have a distinct talent for almost colliding with MPs in the corridor. Seems I know precisely which blind corners to take at precisely what time, to ensure I have to do some awkward corridor dancing with ‘important people in a hurry’.

The list so far includes:
• Bill Heffernan
• Helen Coonan
• Barnaby Joyce (he was sweaty, *shudder*)
• Bronwyn Bishop
• Peter Garrett

All but the last have given me the squinty-eyed “what’s that lesbian doing in Parliament House” leer, on their way past. Or at least, that's what my paranoia likes to believe.

ANYWAY, laydeez, you know that unwritten rule of toilet etiquette, whereby if there are more than 3 or 4 cubicles (which are empty), it is rather bad form to walk straight in to one that has just been vacated by someone else?

Well, I reckon there is such a rule anyway. Some wierd extension of personal space.

The point is, this lady obviously doesn't think there is such a rule:

Check out my ghetto blaster, bitchez. Is tiny to makes my hairz look bigga, yeah!

One particularly exciting evening in da House of late, she high-tailed it at a rate of knots into a toilet cubicle I had just vacated, while it was still flushing.

As has already been suggested to me, she must like a warm seat or something.

Next random thing.

There is quite a high turn-over of security guards at the front desk of my office building (must be the 10-hours a day of sitting and staring at a door, who'da thunk?)

I’ve had my suspicions for some time that these guards have all been sourced from “Surly Lesbionic Security Guards R Us”, or some such similar company, given the steady supply of short-haired, pierced-faced lasses with a penchant for uniforms with shiny badges.

Thing is, I’ve obviously been identified as the token dyke in the building because each day I get greeted with a hearty “hey, howya doin?”, in complete contrast to the regular grunty-like greeting afforded ‘regular’ employees (if they are lucky).

At first I just put it down to the fact that one of the guards was into bikes, and obviously noticed me walking into the building in my bike gear. But it has gone a bit further than that of late.

On Mondays there’s quite often a “how was your weekend? Get up to any mischief? Eh?” *wink wink*. Also, all too often I’ll also receive an unsolicited run-down of the guard’s weekend, with very unsubtle references to local gay bars or events.

My favourite to date has been:

“So I didn’t see you at the bike and tattoo show at the weekend. I won a prize!”

The thing to know here is that I know this guard doesn’t own a motorbike, making this comment very ink-specific.

However, what really topped it off was one morning recently when a new guard was at the desk – I’d never spoken to her or seen her before but she nevertheless gave me a big hearty greeting and called me by my first name.

Seems that the security guard handover for my office building includes an exhaustive briefing on the names and faces of all known lesbians…

Last random thing

Tobias poses for a lolcat picture. Suggestions for captions are welcome.

My ideas to date: “Oh hi. I cleaned ur pans”.

Or, “Iz in ur drawz, lickin ur panz”

On having the maturity of a 12-year old

2007-06-14T14:03:00.000+10:00

I struggled hard with the question of whether I should post this.

But tell me.

Be honest.

Don't you think this woman's name is just a little bit snigger-worthy?

Come on.

You know it is.

You see, this morning, on the way to work, I was overtaken by a tarago plastered with "Joanna Gash MP" branding.

The gash-mobile, if you will.

Yes, it has come to this.

Bourgeois malcontent

2007-06-12T18:16:00.000+10:00

I wish they'd told me that there are responsibilities and commitments tied to this office-endowing new job of mine.

Who'd of thunk it? Not me, apparently.

I was perfectly content to just while away the hours in my realm of massively increased personal space decorating the place with astro-boy paraphernalia and reeling off the odd sneaky (but unheard) burp.

But people keep coming to me for decisions on things. Actual decisions. With implications attached and everything.

I missed State of Origin 1 because I was stuck up at Parliament House until after 11pm.

There should have been something in my sign-on agreement about proper recompense for missing live coverage of sporting events of cultural importance and national significance.

And there's a danger that tonight I'll miss a first-run Simpsons. I mean, come on people! This is getting out of hand.

They've even given me a ~~weekend-ruining device~~ work mobile phone that I 'must carry' at all times. Ruiners.

You'd think I'd go home, rather than sit here and take the time to compose and format a lengthy complaint about being at work late.

But oftentimes, it is the worst kind of 'working late' - where one is waiting on information from someone else before one can meet one's own deadlines.

Mega-uber sigh.

2 minutes on high

2007-06-04T12:18:00.000+10:00

Here an issue one for those new-fangled etiquette guides (you know, the ones that exist to tell your parents that leaving caps lock on in an email = shouting).

What is the etiquette surrounding the office kitchen’s microwave?

More specifically, if I am waiting to use it, and the timer has long since sounded on the unattended lunch currently inhabiting the microwave, how long do I have to wait before I can pull it out and use the microwave myself?

I’ve waited quite some time in the past, paranoid that touching someone else’s lunch is invasion of personal space by proxy.

This is clearly too long to wait, and whilst it keeps me away from my phone and email for a blissful extra 5 minutes, I can only read the 4-year old notices on the notice board so many times.

By contrast, on another occasion, I’ve walked back in to the kitchen just as the timer was sounding on my lunch, only to find someone else pulling it out so they could get their left over tuna mornay in as quickly as possible.

To me, this is too hasty – what if I needed to stir my lunch and heat it for a further 2 minutes?

Modern living is so perplexing.

EDIT: I just wanted to note that I, like a couple of commenters, am of the view one should stick around and wait with one's meal.

However, I have perfected the timing of my reheating such that I can make a quick 'comfort stop' in the time it takes to reheat my lunch. So I feel ok in leaving it to cook unattended. I am a responsible microwave user.

Furthermore, more often than not, waiting with my food while it heats up will involve banal small talk with whoever else is waiting to use the microwave and I have a very limited tolerance for meaningless niceties or talk about the weather. Setting my lunch to heat and walking off to do something else is often more of a survival mechanism than anything else.

But what I am definitely not a fan of is the 'queuing by proxy' some people undertake by leaving their tupperware in a little queue next to the microwave and then lobbing off back to their desk.

Tell you what, if the microwave becomes free and no one is around to 'claim' their place in the queue, I'm not hanging around waiting for you to return.

TGIF

2007-06-01T17:58:00.000+10:00

Everybody's workin' for the weekend!

Well, everybody except this guy:

Man! Weekend detention. Particularly cruel, I reckon.

And I whinge about having to stop at the shops on my way home from work on Fridays...

Ink

2007-05-29T09:04:00.000+10:00

Must. Stop. Watching. Miami. Ink.

All I can think about is getting big, eff off tattoos all over my arms.

Just to complete the whole ‘stereotype’ look I’m after.

Furthermore, I keep throwing away perfectly good money on tattoo magazines.

LovelyWife: Can you pick up some milk on the way home?

Me: Uh, not until payday. I spent my last $30 on the latest airmail copy
of Skin Deep.

LovelyWife: Divorce!

Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself that even though I sit in an office for 10 hours a day busily serving the government, I’m still some kind of underground uber-dyke.

Who am I kidding.

I am a total and utter square.

Plus, whenever I think of tattoos I just think of how terrible they can look.

Today’s koi fish is tomorrow’s faded celtic armband after all.

2007-05-23T12:20:00.000+10:00

If anyone is wondering - no, I for one am not getting excited about the latest opinion polls and their predictions for a Government loss at da next election. Been burnt before, etc etc.

But, has anyone else noticed a theme emerging from government MPs when answering media questions on this issue? The current government is pretty good at staying 'on message', so you don't have to watch too many doorstop interviews or read too many guest 'op-ed' pieces from MPs to work out what the message du jour is.

The theme I've noticed is that Government MPs have been quick to point out to the Australian public that if they vote in accordance with their current intentions (as reflected in polling) there will be a change in Government.

What!? No! That' can't be right? Voting for a change in government will result in a change in government? Gee, we voters sure are dumb.

Tony Abbott (just a warning, say that name 3 times in front of the mirror and the feral b*stard jumps up behind you and hacks you to pieces with a big rusty cleaver) has been particularly strong on this one:

"Just imagine replacing Howard, Costello and Downer with Rudd, Swan and McClelland. That's the fate in store for Australia if polls don't change."

Australia's Tony Abbott gets fitted with a special device which will simulate a heartbeat

Gee, thanks Uncy Tony! I would never have worked that one out for myself. You know, maybe you are right about me not being able to make decisions about my own body and reproductive health too!

And another thing

2007-05-16T17:11:00.000+10:00

On Saturday night, the LovelyWife and I dragged ourselves away from our usual Saturday night activities of knitting and complaining about young people (old ladies, us) to see Missy Higgins at the AIS arena.

I could make this post about how bizarre it is to watch a live performance in a converted basketball stadium, lined with rickety temporary seating, in the middle of nowhere, but this is Canberra and that is a given.

I could make this a post about people who sit at a concert watching the performance through their mobile phone while recording the whole thing for later (way to miss out on the real impact of the performance). But people are idiots, and that is a given.

Or I could make this a post about how obnoxious young people appear to have become (stop talking during the concert – I don’t give a sh*t about your planned camping trip to Splendour in the Grass, and could you please stop spilling your UDLs all over my jacket). But, as noted above, I am an old lady, and that is a given.

Instead, my chosen gripe is uptight, late-30s, overly made-up, tight-jeans and pointy boot wearing, McMansion-inhabiting women, giving me the tell-tale ‘gasp! A lesbian! ~~Right here in River City!~~’ stare, all over the place.

Fuck off you skanky trolls! The looks we were getting, anyone would think we were at a Hillsong meeting, instead of a concert by a singer of noted ambiguous sexuality.

Gee, heading off to a Missy Higgins concert… Hmmm, never considered the possibility there might be just a couple of lesbians there?

In this case, as it happens, I am convinced that each and every lesbian in Canberra was in attendance. Judging by the looks on their faces, I think they were having a similar experience to me – ‘You mean their are other lesbians in Canberra?', etc etc.

But anyway, back to the ranting - there were evil stares coming my way in the carpark, the foyer, the bar queue, the toilet queue and the merchandising queue.

Of most amusement however, was the skanky troll giving me and the wife homophobic leers whilst we were in the bar queue.

As it happened, the wife had arranged by text message to meet up with a work colleague in the bar area. Upon collecting our outrageously priced tinnies, we wandered over to discover that the above noted skanky troll was at the concert with the wife’s work colleague.

Work colleague made obligatory introductions, leading to skanky troll being forced to actually speak with lesbians. Hah! Suck on that.

But then, she awkwardly excused herself, saying she wanted to go in and take her seat… TWO HOURS before the main act was to commence!

Gee, I hope that 2 hours of sitting in that shitty, back-breaking chair listening to the world’s pokiest support act was more tolerable than talking to us uber-dykes.

Pfff.

Straight people. Crazy.

Spot the difference

2007-05-09T07:46:00.000+10:00

So, recently I noticed that this new picture of David Hicks is being used by news outlets.

As soon as I saw it, I knew it reminded me of someone, but who?!

Yeah, well.

If only it was Bernard Fanning locked up in a small room in Cuba for 5 years.

There's your injustice, right there.

Don't you wish your employees were hot like mine?

2007-05-03T20:30:00.000+10:00

So...this afternoon I met with a soon-to-be member of my ~~caliphate~~ team, in my capacity as ~~David Brent~~ manager.

We met in a nearby cafe - it's an ~~establishment that doesn't offer table service but charges the same as those that do~~ 'order your coffee at the counter and take a seat' kinda place.

ANYWAY, said soon-to-be minion receives her coffee first.

Said coffee has "single?" marked into the froth.

(Soon-to-be minion being a not-altogether-unattractive young thing of a female persuasion with trendy glasses and a confident manner. Barista being of a similar description, substituting 'piercings' for 'glasses' and 'male' for 'female'.)

I wasn't really sure how to react to it, so I went with a combination of:

1) WTF?!?!?
2) Why don't I get propositions included in my coffee? Oh, that's right, the butchness.

and

3) WTF?!?!?

I don't know quite why, but this incident, and my reaction to it, makes me feel really old and uncool.

That's alright, I'll just take out these frustrations on the soon-to-be minion when she starts work in a couple of weeks.

That would be the mature, middle-management type thing to do.

Hey, I got a new friend

2007-05-01T12:16:00.000+10:00

Fact 1: Australia has a pretty piss-poor rate of conversion to digital telly.

Fact 2: We could easily fix this by widely advertising the fact that the ABC2 digital-only service is currently running the first (and best) season of Degrassi Junior High in PRIME TIME!!!

The fashions! The teen-angst! The theme song! The quotes!

"C'mon Wheels, it's the '80s!!"

or

"Ceeetlun's a lushbeeyun"

(translated from the Canadian dialect as "Caitlin's a lesbian" - zomg, teenage personal-awakening moment relived!)

If the gummint got onto this brilliant strategy, we'd no doubt be able to bring analogue switch-off forward to, well, next month!

2007-04-26T14:42:00.000+10:00

Well, despite my premonitions of an awful interview, I have recently been successful in getting my filthy homosexual mitts on a management position.

Oh. My. Lord. Yes. All you people out there in taxpayer-land should be quaking in your boots. I will actually have responsibility for stuff. Scary, huh.

Anyway, I feel I have some way to go before properly qualifying as public service middle management. I mean, I have been working on my evil laugh, but so far, all I have got is a malevolent guffaw. I will also have to work on being petty, oppressed and reactionary. But, I’m still young, there’s time for me yet.

Give me 3 months and I reckon I’ll be there.

Rather than focussing on the monumental (and, just between you and me, freakishly terrifying) challenges that the job poses, I have, of course, been focussing on more important things.

Such as the fact that I shall be getting an office – yes, a 3m x 3m ~~fish bowl~~ domain to call my own. *Malevolent guffaw*.

And then there's my inconsolable fear of turning into David Brent. It’s gotten to the stage where I’m worried that if at any stage I do anything that might intentionally result in the people in my team liking me I’ll sprout a pot-belly, a grotesque goatee and creepy overbite.

In the interests of working on my pettiness, I’ve also been compiling a list of nasty things that my previous managers have done to me, for the purposes of taking revenge by acting them out on my fresh, new minions.

spew

wanker

response

dismissive

throw

saying

late

lie

failed

earlier

big-note

drop hints

slackers

Everything

below

basic instructions

bellow

myself

3-hour

joking

15 urgent things

late

And that’s just the stuff I didn’t have to have repressed memory therapy for.

The best part is that now the LovelyWife and I are both filthy, stinking bourgeois middle-management! How good is that. Come the revolution, we'll be first up to the gallows, no doubt.

Better yet, we'll both now have staff to whinge about to each other..."and then, I made her cry again when I told her I was going to fire her tomorrow if she didn't alphabetise my paperclips - hahahahahahaha!"

I say we should fight them and see who wins.

Although, my money would be on her mob – by the sounds of it, a couple of her team could easily be characters on My Name is Earl, whereas I think my team are more likely to be characters from, well, The Office.

And people doubted me when I said I was moving to Canberra to join the public service. Just look at what I have achieved...

Reality TV posts/stories whose titles are puns on 'Reality Bites', bite

2007-04-23T14:07:00.000+10:00

Wow! Did we not watch Big Brother last night, or what!

So we were definitely not blown away by any surprises that may have been announced.

We did not have any strong feelings towards any of the housemates.

And we certainly were not amused/appalled/bemused by Gretel’s outfit.

Hey, looks like not watching Big Brother is exactly the same as watching Big Brother!

Random crap from my camera-phone pt 2

2007-04-19T12:53:00.000+10:00

Because blogging has taught me that if I don't have anything bad to say, I shouldn't say anything at all.

Eat sh*t and die play

2007-04-16T20:31:00.000+10:00

Hot new trend in children’s toys – eating sh*t.

For realz.

Even from this most crappy youtoob movie (I can't believe it isn't more widely available, it is freakin' hilarious) you can see the hours of fun your chidlers will have feeding the doggy, pumping his tail and collecting his little ~~chocolate tic tacs~~ plastic poos.

Indeed.

Why go to the park and play with your real dog, when you can stay in and pretend to live your life.

However, a bit more investigating reveals this toy only comes with one kind of brown pellet.

The set doesn’t come with separate food and poo pellets - they are the same freaking pellets.

So essentially we are teaching children to feed dogs their own poo.

I haven’t been this disturbed since the unfortunate Joe Hockey + speedos incident.

Notes to, and forming part of, the financial statements

2007-04-10T19:40:00.000+10:00

Today, we are going to look at some accounting basics – I share them with you in the hope they will prevent you from suffering the same losses I have.

I take as my example, the film Friends with money.

First of all, I would like to make clear some of the basic assumptions underlying my calculations.

Namely, that despite their inherent value:

1 x Joan Cusack

PLUS

1 x Frances McDormand

WILL NEVER offset the negative equity of

1 x Jennifer Aniston

Let’s look more closely at the correct treatment of Jennifer Aniston, shall we? You may think that, being a completely empty vessel, incapable of conveying any complexity of character, would mean that she attracts, as an ‘asset’, a neutral value, at worst. Further, you might assume that this asset might attain maturity over time.

Don’t feel bad if you got caught out here, it is a common error.

You have to keep in mind the Cusack/McDormand matrix set out above.

Inclusion of Jennifer Aniston in your balance sheet will ALWAYS result in an operating loss, no matter how strongly your other current and non-current assets may be appreciating in value and no matter how robust your risk management plan is.

I stress, Jennifer Aniston must always be classed as a contingent liability, or, if you like to push the accounting boundaries, as an impaired intangible.

Now, I know there is an ongoing dialogue about the merits of moving away from cash-based accounting towards accrual accounting.

I think in this particular instance, we can plainly see the value of accrual accounting in providing a more accurate and holistic representation of the fiscal position that a viewer of this film finds themselves in on completion of the reporting period.

For instance, whilst in cash accounting terms, we only lost $5.95 (being the expense of leasing the film), when we use the principles of accrual accounting (calculating all forms of loss, whether cash-based or otherwise), we can see that there are additional costs associated with depreciation of enjoyment of life, including:

Loss of 88 perfectly good minutes of a human life

AND

Loss of approximately 17 other minutes spent recalling how appallingly stinky this movie was.

When expensed in real terms, all adds up to one big stinking pile of sh*t.

Let’s not forget that there are no revenues (or indeed, any positive in-flows) to offset these massive losses.

So, looking at the bottom line, we don’t even have enough petty ~~snipes~~ cash to launch legal proceedings for mistake of fact against Margaret Pomeranz for giving this movie 4 stars.

Learn from my mistakes people, lest you become similarly morally bankrupt.

Supplementary disambiguation

2007-04-04T11:26:00.000+10:00

Further to my previous, hard-hitting expose of the office sign, it seems things here have taken a turn for the ~~worse~~ unbelievably whacko.

A new sign has appeared in our ~~diseased heck-hole~~ 'kitchen'.

As you can see, it features a photo of the kitchen, in what I can only presume is the clean and tidy state which the anonymous ~~freak~~ sign-poster thinks is what we should all be aiming for:

I'm tempted to print off and post up a sign suggesting that: "So that we can all enjoy our day at work without feeling like we are being watched at all times, please seek help for your chronic nagging problem and leave us all the f*ck alone."

I don't think I will though as I am worried about clogging up the walls in there what with the other new addition - this hilarious plaque.

Oh dear - my guts have just spilled out all over the floor. Seems my sides have split, yet again.

Better clean it up!

Lock and load

2007-03-30T16:47:00.000+10:00

Yes, another Youtube, but seriously, this is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

An amputee with a big, eff-0ff machine gun in place of a prosthetic leg? That would certainly brighten up the current US series of Dancing With The Stars, non?

How to ruin a perfectly respectable reputation, by Jon Heder

2007-03-29T11:53:00.000+10:00

A religious experience

2007-03-27T09:53:00.000+10:00

I've just spent a long-weekend in rural Queensland.

Bananas can be had for $1.49 a kilo. Must be God's country.

There are billboards by the side of the highway which say "You are 9 months older than you think - Protect Life." Must be God's country.

So did I ever mention that I love Canberra? Dear God I love Canberra.

Tell us about a time when you bored yourself to tears

2007-03-20T17:47:00.000+11:00

I had a job interview today.

Not much to report there, but of more interest to me was the dire predictability of my brain in pouring out anxiety-dream after anxiety-dream the night before.

So, in the one night, my brain turned out the following:

I look at the clock and have 2 hours until my interview, then in a matter of seconds, I actually only have 2 minutes to my interview and I'm not showered or dressed, and for some reason I'm in Sydney, 3 hours from my interview.
Then, rushing to do the 3-hour drive to Canberra, my motorbike won't start - someone has loosened the spark plugs. I search for my spark plug tool only to find it missing from my tool box. Once I get the bike fixed, I can't find my helmet.
I go to retrieve my suit and ironed shirt (pre-prepared interview outfit) from my locker at work, only to find it has been stolen by my high-school enemy (WTF?!).
I somehow get my suit back and go to get changed, only to find the changeroom has suddenly transformed into the Bangkok floating market and there is nowhere private to get changed.

I manage to get changed but then can't get to the interview room - It is in a newly constructed building which has no lift and no stairs.

Thanks very much brain. As if I didn't have enough to worry about - now I'm very concerned I have the world's most boring subconscious.

Although, with these kinds of bland stereotypes and predictable denouements floating around upstairs, I might just be in line for a script-writer's gig with Neighbours (boom-tish!).

Lift and jerk

2007-03-14T11:26:00.000+11:00

Ok, that’s it.

I’ve feckin had it with those people who don’t let others exit lifts before barging in themselves, elbows first. Over and over again, the lift doors open and there they are, one foot from your face, sighing impatiently at your very existence.

Hey, toolbag! I know I’m ‘in your way’ but I can’t actually feckin dematerialise you know. Maybe we could share the planet?

Let’s think about it for just a second, Mr Impatient Moron – if you are standing there, 3 inches from the doors as they open, blocking people’s exit from the lift, where do you expect them to go? Backwards into all the other people still in the lift?

Or, rather than the person who has limited space to move giving way, maybe you, with all that empty, unbounded space behind you, could step to the side – something that the people still inside the lift can’t physically do.

Oh sorry, I forgot. It’s all about you and your brief case/6-inch heels, isn’t it. Bet you wish you could drive your 4WD around inside and just run people over if they get in your way.

And before you all pipe up with a clever comment about how insignificant my gripes are – there’s plenty of people in this world writing about the significant issues. I’m simply filling a gap in the market.

Drugs are bad, mkay?

2007-03-12T13:02:00.001+11:00

As well as having the most convenient opening hours, it just so happens that my local pharmacy has the most suspicious staff in the entire galaxy as well.

I mean, I completely understand the need to take due care in handing over medication without a prescription. No one wants to go home with the wrong flavour cough medicine – a horrible tragedy just waiting to happen if it weren’t for the diligence of pharmacists.

That’s fine. But the behaviour of some pharmacists would make you think that society is barely holding back the tidal wave of a non-prescription drug addiction epidemic (“Police today warned teenagers against the terrifying side-effects of laxative abuse” etc, etc).

Another victim of hayfever medication abuse prepares for the tortuous months of rehab which lie ahead of her

As an example, I’ve previously attempted to purchase some higher-end over the counter pain medication for ‘me gammy back’ (as recommended by my GP). I’m only exaggerating the teensiest bit when I tell you this resulted in a bright light in the face, a sly assessment of the redness of my eyes and an onslaught of wickedly ingenious questioning designed to trap unwary drug addicts disguised as middle-of-the-road public servants with lumbago.

The questions started off fairly innocuously, along the lines of “do you have any allergies?” and “are you on any other medication”, and were clearly designed to lull me into a false sense of security and then BANG! In with the trick question - “which is better, a metal or ceramic crack pipe?” obviously seeking to catch me off guard with an unintentionally honest answer of “Uh, ceramic – oh no! The charade is over! I am addicted to naprogesic and you have sprung me! Sob!”

Despite this history of Guantanamo Bay style interrogation, I honestly thought I’d be able to get some simple, run of the mill cold medication relatively easily. I mean, I’ve bought and used this stuff a zillion times before with no questions asked. Plus, I thought the dripping nose, red eyes and general foggy aura would lend an air of genuineness to my quest for paracetamol-based relief.

Ha.

Me: “Hi, I’d like a 12-pack of codrals please”

~~Columbo~~Pharmacist: “No. That is not allowed. The only ones that come in 12s are the prescription only super-strength ones and I can’t sell those to you as you don’t have a prescription and they are a restricted medicine.”

Me: “Uh. Ok. Then I’ll take the 24-pack of the medication I asked for.”

Pharmacist: “Ok, but you do realise that you are not allowed to buy the version that has pseudoephedrine in them?”

Me: “That’s fine. Can I buy these codrals?” *shaking the packet*

Pharmacist: “You can, but you can’t buy the ones with pseudoephedrine in them because you don’t have a prescription.”

Me: “I don’t want the ones with pseudoephedrine in them. I want these ones I’m holding.” *shaking the packet again*

Pharmacist: “That’s fine. But in future you’ll need a prescription for the pseudoephedrine ones.”

Me: “Can I buy these codrals now?”

Pharmacist: “Yes, you can. For now. Now, are these for you or someone else?”

Me: “Me.”

Pharmacist: “Do you have any allergies, respiratory problems or heart complaints?”

Me: “No.”

Pharmacist: “Are you on anti-depressants?”

Me: “No.” But I might want some soon if this keeps up.

Pharmacist: “How is your thyroid?”

Me: “My what?”

Pharmacist: “How is your thyroid?”

Me: “Um. I don’t know. It seems fine to me but how could I know for sure?”

Pharmacist: “Well if you do have thyroid problems talk to your doctor because this medication can affect some kinds of older thyroid medication in a small number of cases when taken in high dosages.”

Me: “Can I have the codrals please?”

Pharmacist: “Ok. Now, do you want the day/night formula?”

Me: “No, just the regular ones please. These ones I am holding.”

Pharmacist: “Ooo. Hmmm. I guess. But you do know these can affect your sleep patterns which can affect your chances of a speedy recovery…”

Me: “Can I please just have this 24-pack of plain, regular codrals?”

Pharmacist: “Fine.”

Fools. I’m going to sell them on the street to kids. I'm going to make a fortune.

Last Saturday

2007-03-07T16:35:00.000+11:00

Well here we go, only 5 days later and I've managed to get myself together enough to upload my MG parade photos.

I reckon they speak for themselves most of the time but I will note they are mainly from the marshalling areas during the hours upon hours of tedious pre-parade wait.

My photos from the actual parade turned out 100% blurry (probably because I was waving my arms around like a maniac) and make me a bit sea-sick to look at, so I won't inflict them on you.

You get all those kinds of shots on the news and in the papers anyway. So hopefully these photos will provide a glimpse of what you mightn't otherwise see.

But before we get to all that, let me just note there was a bit of pre-ride excitement.

Guess whose bike broke down the night before the big day? Yes! It was me, cleverpants. How did you know?

Lousy hunk of junk! Stupid piece o' crap!

Actually, no, I love my bike. But come on!!! The night before? Sunuvvabeyotch.

So anyway, 3 hours of traipsing up and down to the garage lugging tools, in the 35 degree heat, skinning my knuckles on cylinder heads pretending to know how to fix bikes, swearing like a real dyke and I'd gotten nowhere. Eff.

Plan B involved me wedging myself on the back of the LovelyWife's scooter. Which, on the face of it, sounds fine, doesn't it?

Well, I ride a big beefy bike in a big beefy manner and have even ridden on a race track. So under normal circumstances, I reckon I'm not a complete girly. But eff me dead if I didn't squeal like a woman when I got on the back of the LovelyWife's scooter for the first time! I just couldn't overcome the instinctive feeling that if I didn't put my feet down when we stopped, we'd fall over. And you just can't put your feet down as a pillion.

White knuckles a-plenty.

Oh, and if you are looking for a thrill, look no further than riding a scooter on the freeway - ringing the nuts off it at 110km/h and being tailgated by B-Doubles. Could be considered an adrenalin sport, I guess.

But the LovelyWife was a real trooper and I owe her a zillion for giving me a dink!

I did miss out on deafening the crowd with my very excitingly loud and sexy engine revving, but it still an awesome evening. Some people in the crowd even yelled out that they loved the scooter the best.

Which I can now totally understand.

But anyway, on with the photos. Dial-up? Get a coffee.

Cops everywhere this year.

At least they helped jump-start a few broken-down bikes

Shit. Me too.

Her shirt says 'Proud Nan'

Technically speaking, I don't think this really counts as an 'outing'

2007-03-06T08:42:00.000+11:00

Ok, so maybe now I’ll stop getting a zillion hits on this blog from google searches for 'Anthony+Callea+gay'...

“SYDNEY eye in the sky Vic Lorusso has seemingly outed Anthony Callea on radio -not that there's anything wrong with that. He mentioned meeting Callea while discussing an old school mate on The Edge's brekkie show yesterday. "You wouldn't know him. He's a nice guy but his partner, which is Anthony Callea, didn't want to know anything about anybody," he told host Christo. When Christo questioned the comment, Lorusso quickly continued with the traffic report. A spokeswoman for the show claimed Lorusso had not been taking a pot shot at Callea: "Vic had no idea that it wasn't common knowledge.”

That last line is pretty much the most hilarious thing I've heard so far this year.