Over the last few weeks while travelling around this giant country of mine, I have had the opportunity to observe a large number of females in their different natural environments. I have found that women of all shapes, sizes, climates and cities all have one thing in common:

THEY DON'T WEAR PANTS!

Leggings are not pants. They should definitely never be substituted for sturdy outerwear, particularly when wearing a whimsical piece of fabric across your torso that can't make it's mind up if it's a shirt or a dress.

Here are some facts about leggings that I have observed:

1) Despite what you may think, they are not cutting edge fashion. Maybe they were in the 80's, but that was 20-odd years ago and no fashion that emerged in the 80's should ever be revived.

2) They make your arse look fat, regardless of whether your legs are the size of spagetti strands, tree trunks or barns.

3) They aren't warm. Women in colder climates should pay particular attention to this point because this takes suffering for fashion to ridiculous heights. Sure, if you're forced by patriarchal mandate to wear a skirt to the office, I see a reason for leggings and tights to exist. Beyond that, no.

4) You look like a hobo who can't afford a pair of real pants.

5) Older women wearing leggings in place of pants to capitalise on the fact that they 'have still got it' just look desperate, not hip.

6) In all likelihood I can actually see your arse, particulary if you wedge yourself into a tight pair, forcing the threads to separate, like that chick I saw in Adelaide. This is why your mother always insists you wear underwear.

7) Ratty and tattered leggings don't scream 'boho chick', but rather scream out 'crack whore'.

8) If you can't be trusted to dress yourself with any amount of skill, how can you reasonably be expected to make it through life at all? You certainly won't be getting that promotion you so desperately want if your boss thinks you're too retarded to dress yourself.

However, that said, there are only two legitimate reasons for leggings to exist:

1) To wear under our jeans/snowpants when the temperature is subzero and you're likely to get hypothermia and die.

2) In the case of being pregnant when either nothing else fits or is comfortable.

Therefore, if you wear leggings and you are not an eskimo or up the duff, you are stupid.

When I eat at fast food places (I decline to call them restaurants as they are clearly not designed for a gourmet eating experience to rave about) I have a dilemma. A BIG dilemma.

I like burgers, but....

I hate sauces. Tomatoes are disgusting and I refuse to eat them in any shape or form, especially as a sauce, mayonnaise is made from eggs which make my intestines act crazy and tastes like crap anyway and barbeque sauce is only tolerable in very small doses. Everything else seems to be a weird combination of all of these sauces. What kind of sick bastard puts tomato sauce AND mayo on a burger anyway? Freaks.

I also firmly believe that salad has no place in fast food. Oh I have no problem with salad itself, I just hate it when it looks and tastes like it's been in someone's sweaty arse for six hours, which it inevitably does at every fast food outlet.

Finally, I love bacon. Who doesn't love bacon? Bacon is the king of all meats and should ideally be consumed at every meal.

So how do I address these issues? Well I ask for bacon burgers with meat and cheese only. Every fast food place has a button that says "meat and cheese only" on it. Simple you would think wouldn't you. But do you know what the real dilemma is? I say I want a bacon cheeseburger with meat and cheese only... guess what I get asked EVERY single time?

"Do you want bacon on that?" WTF!!!! Bacon comes from pigs, pigs are animals and therefore meat. It's not a dairy product, soy based pretend food or a salad. Of course I fucking want bacon on it you bloody twat or I wouldn't have ordered a goddamn bacon cheeseburger, I'd have ordered a cheeseburger!

I got a death glare from a McDonald's manager today. The sweet 12 year old youth at the counter knew exactly what I was on about and processed the order perfectly (yes, I checked). The pimply apathetic wanker teenager out the back making the burger yelled out at me "Do you want bacon on that if it's meat and cheese only?" The death glare came when I just yelled back "Bacon IS meat, or at least it was the last time I checked"

People are fucking stupid.

So I had occasion to walk through the city this afternoon and observed a rather large portion of the population while I was at it.

As I was walking through City Place a group of young girls walked past us, probably aged very early 20's, if that. Definitely not any older. They were all decked out like a christmas tree; hair done in ridiculous upstyles or flat ironed so straight it could cut you, enough makeup to shame Kiss, jewellery enough to sink the Titanic and heels that would make even the most hardcore dominatrix pale in fear. Their clothes looked incredibly hot and uncomfortable given that it was more than likely at least 37 degrees (that's celcius by way non-Australian peoples). As they tottered past one of them tripped up and naturally I pointed and laughed and said "What kind of dickead wears shit like that walking around the city?". Of course that didn't win me any friends, but it did elicit a snigger from the guy I was with.

Women do some seriously weird shit all in the name of vanity. I saw a girl on Friday who had huge long nails, the kind that you look at and wonder how they manage to do anything without ripping themselves apart (use your imagination). She had little rings on the ends of them and diamontes glued to them. WHY??? Why would anybody want to do that?

Why would you spend hours perfecting your hair and makeup and then spend the day walking around the city in sweltering, melt your face off kind of heat? You're going to look like Alice Cooper's little sister by the end of the day. Why not just wear something cool and comfortable? Oh yeah, that wouldn't be, like, cool, to be seen like au naturel. Because we all know that breaking your ankle from teetering about in sky high heels is something to brag about. And wearing clothes tight enough that I can count the change in your pocket as well as see the outline of what you had for breakfast snaking it's way down your digestive tract is sooooo attractive.

You know why women do these stupid things? Women's magazines. Seriously. If you are A: a man; or B: a woman who has never read one, purely as a social experiment go and have a look at one. "Ten ways to a slimmer new you! - Top tips to make your tummy toned for summer! - What does your clothing style say about you? - Boost your self confidence! (after we tear it down)" the headlines all read.

Reading a women's magazine is tantamount to having hot bamboo rods shoved underneath my nails. They are filled with articles talking about empowerment and self confidence and on the very next page show this years 'must have' jeans with a size chart... if you are above a size 10 you get the message "Sorry these jeans don't come in this size because you are a fat arse". Way to build a girl up and then tear her down again. We're constantly made to feel bad about ourselves because we don't look like the anorexic hos on the catwalk who are being hailed as the image women should strive to be, never mind the fact that for 99.99% of women, unless they have their ribs removed and all their bones shaved in half, being that thin is absolutely impossible. We're expected to look at pictures that have been photoshopped beyond recognition and think to ourselves "Golly gee, I should look like that too" and subsequently spend our entire life savings on overpriced beauty products, ugly clothes, tasteless accessories and then be driven to spend all of our time slaving away at the gym or over the toilet bowl with our fingers down our throat trying to acheive a look that will kill us in the end. Women's magazines are there to capitalise on your insecurities by ingenious product placement and hypocritical editorials. Get a clue idiots, it's not cool.

So with that in mind, I have accepted the fact that I will never be cool. I don't want to look like a trussed up peacock or an acid rainbow. I don't want to wear bubble skirts that look like lampshades or wear baby doll tops that make me look pregnant. I don't want to spend hours painting my face or doing my hair.  I'm too lazy to be a 'real woman'.

This little gem kind of says it all really. And that stirring piece was written by the Chief of Staff.

As I was reading it I was wondering how it was going to end. I was hoping for a nice cheery "and this sarcastic piece of inane vitriol was all in the aim of fun fun fun".  Unfortunately not. It seems this wanker was actually serious.

Issue #1: "Virgins are pure of character and strong of will."
This is a very generalised and broad statement, which given that the nature of his column is a blog, can be slightly forgiven. But I still find it sets my teeth on edge as it seems to imply that once you lose your virginity you turn into something slightly less human. I don't think that I, or any of my friends who are no longer virgins, have lost our strength of will or have had our sense of decency lessened in any way. Nor do I find that those friends of mine who chose to remain virgins until their wedding day, chose to wait until they felt they had found the right person or those that waited (or are still waiting) thanks to bad luck, bad taste and certainly not for lack of trying are necessarily pure of soul either.

Issue # 2: "I watched in wonder at their unique ability to laugh and dance the night away without a skerrick of sin or illegal substances involved. Then I remembered they were virgins, and quickly realised this was their secret weapon."
This makes me want to get up and whack "The King" with a sharp pointy object. The ability to laugh and dance without drinking or drugging oneself is certainly not restricted to virgins wholly and solely. It's certainly possible to have fun in a large crowd without ingesting large quantities of booze and puking up all over your shoes and waking up in a gutter. It's even more possible to enjoy yourself without swallowing strange substances of questionable origin, acting like a fruit loop for a few hours before doing something incredibly stupid that likely results in some serious self harm in a variety of ways. And I especially resent that this wanker seems to think that virginity is a weapon. For heaven's sake! What kind of society are we living in when someone writes about virginity being a weapon? Virginity is not a weapon. It's a word describing someone who hasn't had sex, for whatever reasons, more than likely because of their own personal choice.

Issue #3: "Virgins, I can safely assume, don't bully other kids, or do drugs or binge drink or bash old folks."
What is that oft-coined phrase about assumptions? Oh yeah, they make an ASS out of you and me. Why is it safe to assume that only the deflowered folk are the ones binge drinking or bullying? That I can safely say is absolute crap. I've known some very nice Catholic boys, virgins, who have downed as many if not sometimes more beer than the rest of us in a pub on a Friday night after a really shit week at work.  What about bullying in primary schools? It's getting to be a rather large problem these days, are we going to assume that the children doing the bullying are full of rampant sexual hormones and are out shagging everything they can lay their 11 year old hands on? I highly doubt it.

Issue #4: "No sex means no babies. That's good for our population quotas and even better for those of us who like to travel on planes in peace and quiet."
If you don't like travelling on planes next to children, who have as much right as the next person to be allowed freedom of travel, then you can pay the extra money for a business class seat, or take advantage of the in flight entertainment, take an ipod, take a laptop and watch a DVD or better yet, get a train (which in a country the size of Australia is problematic but I really hate dickheads who yell at parents on planes about babies). And when you're old and sick and need quality care and wonder why there is a shortage of well educated medical staff trying to save your life ask yourself why. Oh that's right. You preached for the world's youth to remain virginal. Everyone else is dead and all the women are past child-bearing age now.

Issue #5: "Unfortunately, the crowds of God's chaste children are now returning to their far-flung countries, leaving us with a vacuum of virgins. So when crime rates suddenly soar, financial markets nose dive and the sun stops shining, you'll know it's because the rest of us are too busy copulating."
Of course, the crime rates wouldn't suddenly soar from the release of most of Sydney's police force being released from Pope duty or doing crowd control at a long event with numbers pushing well close to half a million (seriously, that's a lot of people) and actually being able to catch baddies. I'm pretty sure the sun won't stop shining because the Pope and his pilgrims have departed our shores either (although those particularly religious folk might think so for a time).

I'm still hoping that this douchebag has written this as a sarcastic social commentary, noting that while hundreds of thousands of people flocked to Sydney for World Youth Day there were no (that we heard about anyway) incidences of violence, rape, drinking and drug fuelled idiots causing havok or causing trouble of any kind whereas if you got that many people together for say, a heavy metal concert, it's likely there'd be a whole lotta booze and quite a few fights (and you'd find me right in the middle of it). But as "The King" has a tendency to just write whatever is on his mind and doesn't seem to mind pissing people off left, right and centre with his poisonous diatribes, I've decided he's erring towards the slightly more serious than sarcastic side.

So I'm left with a slightly dirty taste in my mouth, but that's probably just because I'm not pure of mind and soul, given that I have sex and drink booze on a regular basis. I suppose I should join the rest of the crew down at city place. We've got a mob bashing scheduled for 8 and after that we're going to mix some meth and coke, rob a liquor store, drink it all and knock over old ladies and break a few windows. Coz that's what us boozing non-virgins do.