The other day while I was hurriedly scoffing down my breakfast at uni, alternating between furiously puzzling out math questions and distracting myself with my shiny iPhone, I came across an interesting article on ABC News that really got me thinking. Yes, ABC News - curiously, while I no longer have a job with internet restrictions I still manage to always find myself at the ABC News homepage searching for clues as to the current state of depravity within the world. Mainly I theorise it's because it's the only news website without countless insufferable ads, it's easily laid out and if I want to find out what's going on in Finland, they make use of a rather excellent tagging system enabling me to find what I want to know with very minimal fuss. Without further ado - the article

The article is about a debate in the UK over the possibility of social networking being "exploited by extremists". Essentially, the Home Office is considering monitoring the use of sites like Facebook and Myspace in an attempt to see who's socialising with who, apparently without any interest as to the content of private conversations.

That's a bit of a stupid statement really. Logically speaking, if you're concerned about who someone is talking to you would be interested in the content of those conversations. Even the nastiest of nasty people have families, co-workers, actual friends, support workers and the like, whom they are perfectly entitled to engage in benign conversation with and who have nothing to do with any illicit activities said dodgy dude might be involved with. You'd really need to know the subject of the conversation to weed out these kind of innocuous social entanglements, otherwise you might accidentally accuse someone of being a terrorist associate based on the fact that they're the 'friend' or 'friend of a friend' of a person of allegedly dubious intentions. But that wasn't what I was thinking about.

A Liberal Democrat, Tom Brake, voiced his opinion; "Plans to monitor our phone and email records threaten to be the most expensive snooper's charter in history". I disagree. With the amount of personal and private information people seem to be very free about putting on Facebook or Myspace, the government doesn't really need to spend any money attempting to monitor people.

Seriously, just log onto Facebook and click through some friends of friend's pages. You'll be amazed at what you can learn. Phone numbers, personal addresses, email addresses, employment histories, schooling histories, names of friends, photos of everything they've ever done, their political alignment and religious ideologies, 25 fun facts, what they did ten years ago, five years ago and now, pictures of their houses and cars and babies, who their best matches are in a variety of quizzes, where they’ll be at any given time, where they’ve been and where they’re going and that's before you even start reading the comments people leave.

Once you get to the comments people write each other, you get a complete sense of who that person is, enough to make it reasonable that any intelligent person with a skill for disguises has a complete unending supply of people to impersonate. Levels of literacy, the things they place importance on (everyone knows that 'profiles' are all wank), how they treat their friends and family and whether or not they're a total dickweed or a decent person are all able to be easily discerned. You can even find out how they know certain people... "Y went to X school with Z", or "A dated B in high school", or "C and G worked together at S place".

I was a bit miffed when I first read the article and thought to myself "Invasion of privacy alert!" but then I realised that it's really not an invasion of privacy when people put the amount of shit that they do on their public profiles. Not only that, but anyone who knows how to use Google properly can search for anybody's name and likely find a few articles about whoever they are searching for. Newsletters their names might be mentioned in, sporting clubs and match/title results, university webpages, you name it. It's all out there for anyone to find.  Case in point - searching for my real name nets you three pages of results. Every single one of them pertains to me. If anyone decided to come looking for me, it wouldn't be terribly hard to find me.

So while I was eating that muffin and doing my maths homework (which, as it turns out, with proper application I am actually very good at) I came to the saddening realisation that there are no secrets left in this world. Whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen.

I don't smoke. I dislike smokers and I especially dislike smoke pushers, the people who think that unless you are slowly filling your lungs up with enough smoke to spend the last 5 years of your life hacking and wheezing and breathing via oxygen tanks that you aren't cool or worth knowing. I think that those of us who can breathe unassisted are actually the cooler, smarter ones. Sure, we might miss you when you're dead but I've got no desire to jump into the grave with you. The worst kind of smokers however, are those that smoke and drive. There is nothing more revolting. I see someone puffing away on a death stick and driving and my reaction is visceral.

Yesterday I saw a woman in a sports car, with an expensive hairdo and super long nails puffing away as she was driving. She might have thought she was hot shit, but to me she looked like the worst kind of white trash. You could be the hottest, sexiest, most popular woman on the face of the planet, but the second you get into a car and start on the fags you become the lowest common denominator.

And let's face it, you are. You can't even get from A to B without succumbing to your addictions. That's pretty damn pathetic. Not only do you not have friends because you smell like a rubbish dump and if you're a coffee drinker as well then you smell like the newly risen dead, but you're also alienating people you've never even met who see you sucking down a ciggie as they drive past and think "Jeez, how trailer trash is that?"

Men are just as bad as women, although I suffer the urge to punch their teeth in far less than women because most of the men already look like bogans, usually driving utes and wearing wife beaters, so there's not much lower in the social scale they can really fall to. Women at least, are clean about their disgusting habits. I've known men to drive cars where the entire floor of the car is so covered in cigarette butts that you can't tell what colour the floor is (obviously it's brown since it's covered in dirt, ash and scum grime, but if you wanted to see what colour it was you couldn't). Seriously dudes, your car is a crack den. That's gross.

The moral of this story is that smoking is revolting. It makes women look like trailer trash and men look like dirty bogans. Zombies smell better than you. You are gross.

DISCLAIMER:

This is my opinion of ALL smokers, including those in my family and every single one of my friends.

The Cairns Post created somewhat of a shit storm recently when it reported on a woman who had the audacity to complain about having to pay for two seats on an plane because she was rather more than average in size.

Crowing that their report had made international headlines and had been the subject of much debate on their website after the original story was printed, it seems like The Cairns Post feel they've done journalism proud.

Bollocks.

The opening paragraph in the original story, about an overweight woman who paid for two seats on a plane only to find that they were on opposite sides of the plane, begins thus:  "A Cairns woman says there is a fat chance she'll fly with Jetstar again after she claims she was discriminated against for being overweight". A fat chance? A FAT CHANCE? This is supposed to be a news article, not a sly dig at someone's personal situation by a cheeky pun. I'm going to chalk up one nomination for "Low of The Year" for that disgustingly unprofessional intro.

The follow-up article where TCP praises themselves for breaking such a successful story was titled "Samantha a Big Hit". Once again, TCP tries to make a pun on an unfortunate personal situation.

I never bothered to watch the Fox segment, but after following the story for several days it became clear that Samantha's actual issue with Jetstar was not that she was forced to pay for two seats (in the original story it mentions she had discussions with Jetstar staff regarding this policy, so she was obviously not unaware of it), but that Jetstar had said they would work around the issue and then reneged on their stance and asked her to pay for a 2nd seat and then in a fit of genius allocated that seat somewhere else on the plane.

The comments on the original story made me want to punch my computer screen in anger (but I didn't because it's shiny and big and expensive). Most of them were in the vein of "lose some weight you fatty bitch/fatties r gross n i hate sitting nxt 2 dem on da plane ew lose wt!" and calling for Samantha to stop complaining and get on a treadmill, all of which miss the point of the article (the two seats being in different sections of the plane) and completely disregard the fact that there are many other reasons for obesity that have nothing to do with being a lazy cow who scoffs cheeseburgers all day (diabetes, thyroid disease, etc). Some comments were insightful, well thought out and not inflammatory, but the majority made me disgusted at the ridiculous amount of intolerance people have.

As a frequent flyer, I can well attest to the fact that Jetstar have very screwy policies. They've screwed me for scandalous baggage fees at one leg of my trip and then not a cent extra on the return leg. They're also late 100% of the time when I flew with them. Unfortunately at the time for me, being on minimum wage and in a long distance relationship with George I couldn't exactly afford to fly with any other airline. Catching a flight that should arrive at 11.30pm isn't fun at the best of times but is especially un-fun when you arrive at 3am. Another time they completely cancelled my 7pm return flight and put me on a 6am flight instead, effectively cutting short my holiday by an entire day (and that was the ONLY flight option to return that day so I had to accept it). While it's an unfortunate situation for Samantha, it's also nice to see that I'm not the only one that Jetstar have fucked around.

Enough paying out on Jetstar however, let's get back to talking about how stupid The Cairns Post is. I'd be taking The Cairns Post to the anti-discrimination tribunal for that introduction.

People watching is one of my all time favourite things to do. There's nothing more fun than checking out random strangers, making fun of them or making up their life stories as they pass by. It's also good for the hilarity value as people do some pretty dumb shit when they don't think anyone is watching or don't care if they are.

I just came back from spending a week in Brisbane.  I didn't have a car so I  had to make do with catching buses and trains and walking. Seriously, how the fuck to people live without their own transport? Friday I was on public transport for 3 fucking hours to get 20km away from where I was staying. How stupid is that?

Anyway, the point of this is that during my horrendous forays into pedestrianism and wandering around the city bored out of my brain because my stupid friends never show up I've been able to observe an incredible number of Brisbanites in their native environment and document their behaviour. Findings below.

• Emo scene kids are incredibly lazy. I got into the city very early one morning and headed past the Hungry Jacks in Queen St mall where they all hang out. Not sure why scene kids are all drawn to HJ's but they seem to congregate around the HJs in the city in Melbourne too. There was one incredibly unattractive girl sitting down outside, arms and legs akimbo, messy hair, tattered tights, smeared makeup, patchy badly bleached hair with a fat face yelling things at her 'friends'. 5 hours later I walked past again and she was still there, sitting in exactly the same position with the same group of badly dressed friends. Lazy bitch. Get a job!

• Eagle St Pier is where all the serious suits hang out. Sure, there are suits in the city, but the SERIOUS suits hang out drinking their soy decaf lattes down the Eagle St strip. The women have the highest heels, the sharpest cut clothes (and I don't necessarily mean that they look snazzy, but that the edges on their outfit could cut you in half) and bucketloads of makeup on that makes them look orange and bitchy. Underneath that makeup they might be quite attractive women but I think they go out of their way to paint on their bitchface in order to be taken seriously in the cutthroat world of corporate whatevers. I saw several men riding to work on Segways because obviously their expensive Italian shoes are too precious to ruin by walking the 200m from the ferry stop to their office. Pretentious gits! It's BRISBANE, not fucking New York. Neither man nor woman had a hint of a smile anywhere near their faces, it was definitely scowl city. You could feel the tension in the air. Oh, and I was wearing a skirt with Doc Martens and when I walked past the suits their eyes would flicker and their scowls deepen as I was obviously nothing but scum. Har. You fuckers are gonna work for me one day soon!

• The stereotype about Woodridge being a scary place is definitely true. The Woodridge train station is probably the scariest place I've ever had the misfortune to be. I'd rather take my chances with the ghosts in an abandoned mental asylum.

• Teenagers are dickheads. I got on a train one night (after I accidentally caught the Gold Coast express) and three teenagers were getting into trouble from the train police dudes for not having a ticket. Two boys and one girl. The older boy was 14 and was obviously trying to impress the girl by being a rude shit to the police dude and the younger boy was 13, sitting a few chairs away and while his friends were being interrogated he amused himself by yelling insults to them. Yes, I do know how old they are because the cop dudes asked them. Once the cop dudes had taken down all their information the boy trying to impress the girl yelled all sorts of insults out to the cops about his apparent dubious parentage, then the parentage of everyone else on the train along with a mixed bag of other rubbish. The cops came back and told him if he didn't shut up he'd be having a very unpleasant night which quietened him until the point where the cops moved to the next car and he started up again. Twat.

• Women in jewelry shops can't handle ordinary women, only bridezillas. While shopping for my wedding ring I had the misfortune to come into contact with several jewelry saleswomen who were all very rude to me when they found out that my wedding was less than 3 weeks away and I hadn't bothered buying my rings yet. They were even colder still when asking what carat my engagement ring is and I had to confess I didn't know. Turns out it's a rather fancy expensive one, but it could be made of stainless steel and cubic zirconia for all I care, it's shiny and pretty and fits - surely that's all that matters? Unfortunately saying that didn't win me friends either and they lectured me on why you must have a wedding band of the same carat or the lesser carat ring will attack and murder the one of the higher carat. I got another scolding when I mentioned I live in Cairns, didn't know when I was going back there and that I didn't mind if the ring I picked wouldn't be ready in time. By the time I was finished I felt like a naughty little schoolgirl who hadn't done her assignments and was in danger of flunking womanhood.

• Video game stores tend to hire a ridiculous amount of boys with flat ironed fringes and plugs in their ears to manage their stores. If their hair isn't flat ironed then it's styled in a way that makes it impossible to determine their sexual orientation. They are all twatty posers who think that just because I am a woman I would be interested in shit games like The Sims. Hello? I've been fucking around gaming since before you wankers were even born. I bet they couldn't even tell me what an Amiga is, let alone recall a single game made for it or be able to discuss the differences between gaming then and gaming today without saying "oh but the graphics today are like way cooler than the olden days".  When it comes to nerds, I reign supreme bitches. Oh, I thought I might mention that there is an exception to this rule, which is James. Because he's awesome and doesn't have flat ironed hair. He's prone to mohawks. Mohawks > flat ironed twats.

• People who like to pretend they are cool because they are "so random and unpredictable" are actually fairly predictable in their behaviour - i.e. they are just arseholes to people because it gives them attention. They definitely aren't cool.

• If you get a group of individually decent people together of one particular 'scene' or 'group', it turns into a pissing contest about whatever their particular passion happens to be. Nerds argue about the value of rolling a destruction warlock as opposed to a mage in World of Warcraft, geeks argue about absolutely everything from games to political science and metalheads argue about who has the more brutal tattoos and make fun of people whos tattoos don't depict some grisly scene or are a homage to their favourite bands.

• When you're dreading someone bringing up a particular topic in conversation it's guaranteed that the minute you think you're safe - BOOM! - there it is.

• African women wear very little makeup. There's no need to really, they're all bloody stunning. You could put an African woman wearing a hessian sack next to a white chick dolled up to the nines and the white chick would come off looking like trash.

I'm sure there was more that I'd thought of but right now I can't remember.

166 pages of spam comments to delete?

Fuck off arseholes!

I am very excited. Why? Because as of next Wednesday, I am completely committment free.

I quit my job. It's something I've always wanted to do. Writing down my job description as "Lady of Leisure" always sounded so glamourous. Of course, that's not the reason why I did it. I did it because the last two weeks have probably been the worst of my life. I don't necessarily feel the need to elaborate at present although I am sure I will in the future when I can think about what's gone on without alternating between despair, severe anger and an overwhelming desire to destroy my surroundings which is my natural instinct when things don't go my way. 

Working seems like an unnecessary form of torture at the moment, particularly since I've got very little actual work to do. The giant paycheck is going to be missed but if some stupid schmuck buys my second house it won't matter because I can live off the profit from that for several months, possibly years.

Part of my conditions of unemployment (yes, George has supplied me with a list of conditions) requires me to produce at least one lengthy tome of fiction and work on this website more often than once every three months. Given that he's pretty much paying for me to sit on my arse and do nothing from now until I graduate in four years I think that's one condition I can probably meet. At least he didn't demand I spend four hours a day in the gym, host dinner parties for his clients, dye my hair blonde, remove my personality and spend more money than I've ever seen at once on plastic surgery to become the epitome of the trophy wife. Were that the case I think he'd probably find himself contemplating a life without children because his testicles would be removed with a rusty blunt instrument.  So after next Wednesday I'm going to be making a serious effort with this website as well as my novel/s.

Also, I technically will be a trophy wife as George and I have decided to move the wedding to February. We'd decided it would happen later in the year, next year, or never at all but recent events have kind of inspired us to want to do something so that we remember the beginning of this year in a more positive note. The celebrant sent us through a list of vows and readings that we can pick from to tailor the ceremony to suit us, but to be perfectly honest all of them make me want to be sick. If anyone has any kind of ideas of how two extremely nerdy shy heavy metal loving weirdos can get married without vomiting over sugar coated rubbish please let me know!

~ Apologies for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, etc. While I pride myself on my usually brilliant English, I'm also incredibly drunk and building a fort out of empty bourbon cans. It really has been a fucked up week.

Spammers are scum. The kind of scum that can only be likened to something as repugnant and virulent as the Ebola virus.

They should be eradicated at the source, and I don't mean destroying their source codes or anything nearly as nice as that.

I want to find the fuckers advocating spamming my inbox with penis enlargement and viagra advertisements. A: I'm a girl, a very happily straight girl with no designs on growing a penis ever; B: George has the sex drive of a teenage virgin, giving him viagra is the absolute furtherest thing on my mind; C: Even if I did decide to get a penis or decide George's was inadequate, do you really think I'd be so fucking retarded as to click on any of the links from a spammer? 

I logged in today to write a few nice (nasty) stories about things and people after a fairly lengthy absence due to some intense studying, no internet, moving house, all the usual mundane shit that life dumps on you, and I find that I have 900 billion spam comments advocating, you guessed it! All sorts of genital enhancements.

Unfortunately, I am not blessed with being a 1337 h@x0r, but rest assured if I was, I would track down those fuckers and chop their dicks off with a blunt, rusty axe and force feed them a shitload of viagra as a particularly cruel torment. Then I would spam the entire world photos of them being tortured and mutilated and not one person on this planet would lift a finger to stop me. In fact, every single country would probably award me their highest military honour for outstanding dedication to the protection of the people. I'd have to keep my 2nd house as a trophy cabinet I'd have so many of them. I'd be the most popular person on the planet and nobody would give a shit what kind of atrocities I'd have committed to get there.

Instead, I've decided to put up with everyone else's bitching about having to log in to post comments or waiting for authorisation before comments are listed. Why? Because deleting 30 pages of shitty spam comments really pissed me off and I'm not doing it again. So if you want to comment, you can damn well log in and comment, or if that's too much bother for you, then you can post anonymously and I'll only authorise it if you're not trying to get me to grow a dick. Seriously, a girl could get a complex about that.

I make no secret of the fact that I hate birds. Birds are evil and should all be put to death. No amount of environmental activists wanting to preserve the species or idiot people telling me they are cute and harmless will EVER change my mind.

As far back as I can ever remember, I have hated birds. I don't remember where my hatred began or if it even began, I have a suspicion my hatred is inherent and passed on to me through my genetic code via my mother who hates everything (especially animals).

My brother had a bird once. He was just a kid and wasn't really good with the concept of regular feeding patterns and it died. It was noisy and irritating.  I wasn't sad.

My grandparents had a bird for a million years, since even my dad was a kid. It died too. It used to bite me. I wasn't sad.

Every single person I have ever lived with had a bird. All of them, except Jacqui god bless her wonderful soul, would let the vile creatures out of their cages and let them have the run of the house. Feathers would be everywhere. The little fuckers would shit all over my possessions. They would land in my hair and pee on me. They would swoop in and bath in my dinner before I could eat it. I can't even begin to describe the amount of self control I had to conjure up not to feed them rat poison or leave a window open. Someone (not me) decided to put one of them in the microwave as a joke. Whoops. He turned it on and fried it's brain. Then I had a zombie bird to contend with because it just wouldn't die. It kept on going for years and years and as far as I know it's still hanging around doing the zombie shuffle with a giant tumour on its eye (as a result of the microwave incident).

Today, leaving work: It's Friday. I'm happy. Yay, it's the weekend! I'm walking along the street in front of a large hotel chain listening to my ipod merrily skipping back to my car. Next thing I know my head is on fire because some fucking bird just swooped me and pecked my head. Then it turns around and dive bombs me again. I shriek and throw my hands up to cover my head. It dives again. And again. Four times. And the people parked out the front of the hotel are in their cars LAUGHING at me.

I HATE BIRDS!

Then some wankers on scooters nearly crashed into my car because they were riding next to each other, looking at each other and chatting away, zoomed around the corner and didn't notice my giant blue car STOPPED 50m in front of them.

It's all the bird's fault. I don't care if it's irrational or makes no sense. Birds are evil and will bring death, destruction and mayhem upon all who come across them. If that doesn't convince you, I was reading a book today called 'A Time of Justice'. In the book, an evil sorceress turns herself into a RAVEN and starts killing people.

Harbingers of DOOM!

I would like to point out that I failed maths in high school. Not the kind of fail where you still managed to approximate 50% and therefore actually pass, like most people seem to think is the equivalent of failing (perhaps it's more English that is not their strong point), but the ridiculous 12.5%, E minus kind of fail. And the only reason I got 12.5% was because I cheated and got the answers off someone else. Before I was at that school I was passing pretty well actually... mainly because Nyssa was a better mathematician so Emma and I would just copy everything from her. Except we failed once because the teacher noticed our assignments were identical and we couldn't explain any of the things we'd actually written, mainly because we had no idea what we'd written.

So I don't like numbers. Never have, never will. My friends went into accounting. I would rather prostitute myself on a dark corner in the dodgiest city on the planet than actually have to spend time with numbers. I'll take my chances with the drug pushers, rapists and murderers, the chances are I will probably come out of it better than if I sat down with a calculator and a page of numbers. I have been known in past employment to have to deal with accounts. Saying I spent 90% of my time tearing my hair out would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say I spent 90% of my time tearing my hair out, swearing, ripping pages, bashing the keyboard, hitting the monitor, kicking the desk, throwing calculators, hurling the contents of the desk across the room and screaming like a banshee. Actually, I've always wanted to meet a banshee just so I could hear what they sound like... plus it would be a kind of cool career choice, I'd love to run around all day screaming in peoples faces. I already do it in my head.

I'm actually out of town this week, I'm on campus doing all my practical work for my uni course. My uni course, which I might add, that is in the medical not mathematical field. 30% of my exam is based on mathematics. This is dire news indeed and I've resigned myself to certain doom.

The laughable part of the entire week of course is the fact that I actually understand the concept. I don't like numbers, I failed maths, I'm about as clued in as a deaf person at a rock concert, yet I still understand the basic concept. What's even funnier is that I've had to explain it to other people, which is pushing me towards pulling out my inner banshee. So it can't be that difficult if even the most stupid numbers person on the planet (me) can get it.

I did pull out my inner banshee this morning at an intersection though. Some stupid idiot decided that it would be fun to stop on a green light. Even I can do that maths:

Green light + foot on accelerator = GO! = No banshee.

Green light + brakes + no traffic hazards ahead + Kaitee running late + Children of Bodom CD picking that moment to stop working = BANSHEE! + scared pedestrians.

For the last few days, the administrative staff at the hospital I work with, and at all public hospitals across the state, have been threatening strike action trying to garner a more impressive pay rise than 3.5%. Today, they are actually going on strike.

I have serious issues with people who think that by stopping work they are sticking it to the establishment and showing how committed they are to demanding that their voices be heard. There are plenty of other ways to stand out from the crowd and be heard. People who go on strike deserve to wear any negative fallout from their stupid actions and shouldn't hide behind the "I'm in a union, you can't do this to me!" banner. We work in a hospital for fucks sake. You might not think that administrative staff going on strike is going to change things, but let me ask you this: Who is it that will admit you to hospital? Who bills your accounts? Who books the theaters? Who makes the appointments? Who does all the thankless tasks you probably would never think of that are necessary to the effective running of a hospital, which is the kind of workplace that cannot afford to have staff on strike?

Going on strike is not the answer. You may not think it, but it endangers the effectiveness of the workplace. Some work can be pushed onto other people, other work cannot. You don't really want some inexperienced person trying to run things do you? Chances are they'll fuck it up.

Anyway, the main reason I'm pissed off is because they are arguing for "fair wages". The public health system has the BEST pay scale out of ANY other alternatives in this state. And I've worked for all the alternatives and I'm quite prepared to scan in and email around my payslips to anyone who thinks otherwise. I am paid $7 an hour MORE than what I used to (that's $15,470 more per year, which is a massive increase) when I was working in the private sector. In one year I have the approximate case load that I used to have in a month. All year, I have sat on my arse, done sweet fuck all compared to what I used to do and got paid $15K a year more to do it in. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT????

The other reason I'm pissed. Oh yeah, union members keep telling me that they're doing this for my benefit as well and that I'm anti union and am therefore the devil. Bullshit. I am not anti union. I'm all for unions, when it's a union for people who actually have risky jobs, shit pay or are exploited in some way. But don't they realise we are on a seriously sweet deal? Don't fuck that up for me. Seriously.

And don't strike either. Just because I'm on a sweet deal and have nothing to do, doesn't mean I want to have to do your work, which is what I will be doing today. So any mistakes that happen because I don't know what the fuck I am doing, are going to come back to me, I'm the one who's going to get in the shit for it, and not you union wankers who put me in this position.