31 may
Announcing the OoMFA Awards 2008
In this twilight zone before my poo at work makes me bigger than the 7 or 8 Habits chappie, I’m devoting some brainpower to the Order of Meritorious Fuckwittage to Australia awards because it’s raining nominees.
April’s retrospective nomination goes to the people most responsible for the continued financial haemorrhage and delays to Melbourne’s public transport ticketing system, and not leaving space on my new train for ticket or validation machines. Free public transport for at least two years — try making a decision like that in the private sector and keep your job.
Finding a nomination for May was easier than taking the baby bonus off a wealthy person. When a television network director defends a misogynistic and unapologetic presenter facing a defamation lawsuit, causes lower audience ratings and the loss of sponsors on the basis of recovering from surgery, it’s too easy.
The background is here for anyone who’s been holidaying on a distant planet the last few months, but the program televised a segment of the presenter manhandling a mannequin dressed as a female journalist, with accompanying remarks including women “served very little purpose” in football.
Two months later, when complaints from women did jack shit but financial implications started biting, the network took action an ordered the presenter to take leave. Channel Nine executive director, Jeff Browne, said “In order for Sam to return to full health without the stress of having to perform on live television each week, I have directed him to take a break from The Footy Show.”
He added, “As a component of this rehabilitation, I have arranged for Sam to undergo counselling to address, with professional assistance, the behaviour and issues that have attended what I now believe to be his premature return to the program.”
A layperson linking an employee’s cause of surgery to the effect of using his position in public inappropriately is impressive in the fuckwittage stakes. He had some competition from close quarters, though.
Coming second was another of the show’s presenters, whose comment may have just scraped into the May nominations: “I don’t accept that I’ve got to go and talk about showing respect for women,” he said at the time. “We accept that you have been critical of us … that is it, done and dusted … if you can’t get over it, well, that’s your problem.”
A worthy third was the other presenter, who said, “With the benefit of hindsight we brought him back way too early.”
Once, twice, three times in defence of misuse of public influence is three too many, but the executive director has the power upwards to take derogatory comments off air and downwards to kick some respect into staff. Use it.
Crank-o-meter: shirty
29 may
I am in the poo with the sugar industry
I’m losing an argument with a sugar company on the philosophy of art versus geometry in product marketing, but I’ll continue to fight the good fight.
25 May - crankygram to the sugar company about this travesty
Hello, just to satisfy my curiosity, why are your sugar cubes not shaped like cubes any more? They are more like lozenges or tiny house bricks.
26 May - response from sugar company
Thank you for your email.
Boxed “cubes” are indeed under the description of cubism. They were never intended to be exact cubes and never have been.
Wow, I’m playing with professionals here. Who’d have thought an authority on the cubist art movement would be working for an organisation that flogs simple carbohydrates? (apart from being qualified to skilfully deflect smartarse customers and their stupid questions).
26 May - return crankygram to sugar company
Ah ha, [sugar company] adapts the artistic movement of cubism in product design, while I was on the geometrical plane.
I need to re-visit my manual of poo at work for advice on how to wriggle out of this because they’re shitting all over me.
Have you ever written to a company to complain about a product and received a basket of freebies in goodwill? That’s not going to happen here.
Crank-o-meter: shit-scared
27 may
My poo is about to take over the corporate world
Not literally, so don’t quit your jobs in a panic just yet, but I’m working on a new management theory that will make Fish! and the One Minute Manager look like amateur hour in comparison.
I was going to call the concept shit at work based on the amount of crap that obstructs the functioning of most workplaces, but my creative think-tank wants a zingier name for the marketing blitz and follow-on franchise of books, training and newsletters (or poo letters, as mine will be known). So, poo at work it will be.
The poo concept
poo at work is the next generation of identifying, dishing out and surviving onslaughts of shit in the workplace. Our poo at work is the new leader in shit management systems for all levels of an organisation.
poo for managers focuses on building a range of skills to fling shit successfully
Managers, ever needed to:
~ Conceal a pile of poo caused by your ill-thought decisions?
~ Make sure your shit doesn’t stink?
~ Create a total shit-fight and still be paid huge bonuses?
~ Get poo-ons lower in the organisation chart to take the blame for your shit while you get promoted?
~ Poo with influence: spread shit with style and ease to get others on board with your particular brand of poo
~ Reduce staff turnover because you’re a shithead? Learn to recruit with poo
We’ll train you in the latest poo-flinging techniques that’ll make you smell like roses.
poo for poo-ons
Workers, ever wanted skills to:
~ Survive the shower of shit from incompetent fools above you in the food chain?
~ Shovel shit to avoid being blamed for someone else’s poo?
~ Be landed in so much poo you need techniques to break it into manageable nuggets?
~ Understand why you’re a shit magnet and the reasons others choose to poo on you?
~ Don’t get enough poo? Learn to negotiate a poo rise
We’ll teach you up-to-the-minute survival skills that’ll reduce the tide level from above your head to around your neck.
Come and excel at poo at work with our crack team of trained poo gurus. If you’re too busy to devote time to poo effectively on a course, the manual of poo at work is available for the special price of $29.95.
I am now a management legend, so please refer to me as the grand poo-bah. Thank you for your co-operation. Happy pooing.
Crank-o-meter: trademarks, patents blahdy blah pending. Steal my poo and I’ll shit all over you
25 may
The art of a perfect sentence (or soup)
Some desires seem to defy understanding or reason.
I’d love to draw, or paint, or sculpt; express in the visual medium, using colours and textures and concepts to capture a moment in time. But I can’t get what’s trapped inside to come out.
I can see the end result in my mind but the connection between the mind’s eye and fingers is warped, seemingly beyond rescue. My adult drawings are still primary school doodles of thick-necked and lumpy-legged horsies and stick-branched trees sporting fluffy clouds of foliage. Minimalism, modernism, expressionism, no, my output belongs to the master school of juvenile crap.
The positive ‘you can do anything if you put your mind to it’ rings hollow when it comes to visual expression because I want to do it to the standard I see in my mind. I have broken many tutors at drawing classes, painting classes, graphic design classes, computer illustration classes so it’s not through lack of trying to tame or shape the frustration.
I still love art, from pondering the inks and dyes used centuries ago in long-faded religious frescoes, to the eye-popping brashness of the modern movement, but I’ve never understood why.
Finally, one sentence in a review of the works collected by Picasso said what I’ve needed to understand.
“When Picasso was looking at paintings, he was nourishing himself.”
That’s it.
I can’t feed others through visual expression, but art keeps my soul well fed.
Crank-o-meter: perhaps home-made potato and leek soup can be art, in a rustic post-Warhol kind of way
23 may
Free gift super bonus post with purchase - making champagne cocktails with crankypants
The recipe:
One bottle sparkling wine (not cheap shit you wouldn’t pour down the throat of your worst enemy, either)
Angostura bitters (yum)
Brandy (ditto as per sparkling wine. I have some St Agnes brandy in the cupboard. I think she is the patron saint of fermented grape products. Salut, Agnes, and love your work)
Sugar cubes (not sugar slabs, or sugar half-arsed blobs, or gritty white rectangular thingies, but f$%king cubes. CUBES I tell you! What is this cheap and vile substitute?)
The method:
Put sugar CUBE in glass.
Drop some bitters on the CUBE.
Add sparkling wine until bubbles are close to the top of the glass. Pour slowly or the froth will overflow and you’ll make a doofus of yourself licking from the glass.
Watch the pretty reddy-orange colour swirl alongside the bubbles.
For a dry taste and warm weather beverage, add less than a teaspoon of brandy. If it’s colder than an ex’s heart, like in the southern hemisphere right now, add a teaspoon of brandy for a gentle warming effect on one’s inners. If it’s colder than an ex’s heart *and* you’ve had a shitty day at work, pour from the brandy bottle until it’s about to spill, and don’t care if you have to lick the overflow running down the glass. That’s life, make every drop count.
Drink and repeat.
Crank-o-meter: if that’s a sugar CUBE, I’m a monkey’s ringhole
Buddy, can you spare a dollar?
I have the shits up with almost everyone and everything at the moment. Accordingly, today’s entry will be brief so I dedicate myself to a non-alcohol-free day. Cheers.
Before the sun sets on sobriety, I’ve awarded the Tightarse Tosser of the Week to a senior-level person at work. He earns $73 an hour, or more than a dollar a minute (this was part of the judging criteria because it’s the little things bringing forward my frontal lobotomy surgery). And I f$%king well can’t stand meanness of spirit and wallet.
The scene: a seriously big morning tea yesterday in honour of Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea
The reason: to raise funds for the Cancer Council
The prelude: e-mail and reminder sent to everyone suggesting a five-dollar donation to support a worthy cause
The spread: mountains of home-made hot snacks, fresh sandwiches, dozens of cakes and the best macaroons I’ve ever eaten
The value: I’d give a fiver just for another macaroon — my kingdom for some coconut!
The tosser: presented a 50-dollar note and asked for change. Was asked how much change he wanted. He said 49 dollars.
Hope you choke on your tea cake, tightarse.
Crank-o-meter: *hic*
21 may
F$%k you and the virgin you rode in on
Bloody hell, I’ve tried to elucidate three times how the sexual double standard of female ‘purity’ pisses me off but it’s not working. I’ll sit here and weep for the next generation of sexually-unaware women who will learn to control with their vaginas, and make voodoo dolls of the men who’ll complain for years after they marry them.
Father-Daughter Purity Balls are still being held on the social circuit, where the premise is fathers dress up and show off their chaste female offspring and pledge to protect their sexual purity until marriage.
Here’s the view of a 19-year-old at the ball:
“Something I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful,” said Jordyn Wilson, 19, another daughter of Randy and Lisa. “If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”
If I can delay smacking my head against the wall in frustration for a few moments, I can see a glimmer of hope and long-term revenge. How many of these manipulative men complain of “not getting enough sex” as their own relationships age? Many, I hope, if they’re indicative of feedback from the general population.
Whoops, shame only ‘impure’ women make porn videos and you won’t be watching that alone in your computer room at night. You beget what you breed and purity’s not so fun when it’s your own conserva-pure partner doing the bedroom starfish, I bet.
Got sons, upbringers of ‘pure’ teenage girls? Good on you for fast-tracking them to sexual frustration as well when they marry in the same circle. You’ll have something to whinge about at the next family barbecue.
Crank-o-meter: ffs
19 may
According to technology news, companies have developed software to detect if employees are lying when calling in sick from work. Fan-f$%king-tastic, I was on the look-out for new and creative ways of keeping an eye on adults recruited and paid to do their jobs.
The call centre model of monitoring everything from average call times to toilet breaks isn’t enough in the modern workplace, it seems, nor is systematic checking of telephone, e-mail and internet use. I used to recruit for companies that monitored their employees closely and 40 per cent staff turnover a year was typical — not only because of on-the-job pressures, but the Big Brother style of ‘performance management’ encouraged people to do the minimum to get by rather than want to contribute. Trust and loyalty flow both ways or not at all.
The story also noted in Australia that private sector employees take fewer sick leave days than their public sector counterparts. In some delightfully short-sighted reporting, there’s no explanation for the difference. I’ve worked in both sectors and there is generally more pressure in the private sector to be at work and sick leave is used only when a person is suspected of having bubonic plague or can’t get a taxi straight from the hospital to the office after having surgery. Most government departments’ collective agreements have a broader definition called personal leave that can be used to manage personal healthcare needs and acting as a carer for immediate family so ‘sick’ leave might be helping a loved one get to chemotherapy or dialysis as in the cases of two co-workers.
Got the flu? Have a couple of days off, don’t infect the 50 people around you and come back when you’re not ejecting a volcano of snot around the office every few minutes. A workmate came in with infections in both eyes a few weeks ago, saying she was too busy to take time off. Hey, conjunctivitis is Latin for ‘disgusting and contagious weepy eyes’ so do some assertiveness training and tell your manager that someone else is doing the admin job for a few days. I promise the economy will cope without you.
Perhaps I’m out of touch as a manager, but if a member of my team needs an extra day off to recover fully from illness, take a family member to an appointment, or say, “I need a mental health day tomorrow,” because we have a working relationship open enough to be truthful, take it and we’ll sort out the stuff at work.
My team’s unscheduled absence rate is almost zero because they have the freedom to behave like adults and manage their work and private lives. If I need someone to drop everything to meet an urgent deadline, it happens. In return, if someone needs a day at the beach instead of the office, it happens. And we have never missed a deadline or left someone covering for us because we feel in control rather than being controlled.
You can stick your sick leave call monitoring right up your tight arses.
Crank-o-meter: f$%k off idiots
17 may
Smelling like roses? I don’t think so
This post continues the recent trend of topics that should not be read during meal times, so please put the chocolate down for the next few minutes.
Without beating around the bush, so to speak, how and why did vaginal deodorant come into being – and is still on the market?
(Yes, it’s Friday night and I’m researching vaginal deodorant on the web and drafting this entry. I may not have a life, but at least my vagina smells like it ought and not like a scratch’n’sniff product at an air freshener tradeshow. And, yes, I even went to the supermarket to get photos for those who don’t believe – I am on security camera footage taking photos of flower power in a can for pussies.)
I had forgotten its existence until yesterday, when a caller to a radio station told half the world she rolled deodorant along her bottom “in case it smelled.” Quite rightly, her family thought she was mad and refused to copy her habit.
Was I home watching Bold and the Beautiful when personal hygiene classes in deodorising and anti-perspiring your back end were taught at school? Who the hell puts Rexona on their bumholes? Would it not sting? How did this woman choose between aerosol and roll-on? Would the pine-scented stuff gain an even more intense stench being squished in the warm crease of her butt cheeks? Does she have to write ‘underarms’ and ‘bum’ on each bottle because surely she wouldn’t use one for both purposes? Or would she? Everyday life is too much for me some days.
After some seriously disturbing visual images, it reminded me of a former housemate who came home after a liaison and warned me to never, ever, ever, ever use Fem Fresh because the merest hint of its scent would cause him to vomit uncontrollably. I had to ask, “What is this Fem Fresh of which you speak?” He shook his traumatised head and said he couldn’t even mention the brand name again but, regardless, never to use it. Of course, the first thing I did was head to the supermarket and hunt it down. The poor chappie must’ve had close encounters of the perfumed vagina kind and will never recover.
While I am lambasting the woman on the radio for re-scenting her bum, a generation of women is still spending money to change the natural aroma of their girl bits to sickly florals. For what? And it’s not just a dedicated cult of Fem Fresh users: there’s competitor brands, ‘super extra strength’ formula, do-it-yourself apple and lavender recipes on the web — a whole f$%king cottage industry of concealing reality. This isn’t a morning swish of mascara and lip gloss as part of a beauty routine; it’s deluding the person applying it and deceiving whoever’s unfortunate enough to put their head in the region.
If you are not happy with the smell from your vaginal area, see a doctor as soon as possible for diagnosis or a reality check. If you’re not afflicted with mutant bacterial imbalances or other disorders, live with it, please. Regular showering — or damp toilet paper in a pinch — will do the job if you’re feeling less than fresh during the day.
Does the men’s personal hygiene aisle have dick deodorant? No. And we don’t need floral fannies.
Crank-o-meter: lamenting the continued downfall of feminism
15 may
Crank-o-meter: where are youuuuuu?
13 may
Squeaky side effects (or, is that a mouse in your pants?)
I like to read. When I’m not reading tampon boxes, I sometimes flick open prescription medicine pamphlets and check out all the gruesome things that might happen if I’m told to pop a pill for my own good.
Generic side effects tend to appear on all warnings including high blood pressure, low blood pressure, feeling high, feeling low, increased appetite, decreased appetite, oh, and stroke or death to cover any other unpleasant symptom. However, I now feel sorry for people who have nasty side effects from life-enhancing surgery rather than drugs. The New York Times reports that patients are starting to squeak after ceramic hip replacement surgery, not in a humorous Mickey Mouse style of talking, but their new hips are making uncontrollable squeaking sounds.
I shouldn’t laugh because karma will bite me in the bum when it’s my turn, but interview subjects reported being on the lookout for animals when they first heard the squeaks, and another was climbing stairs when she heard noises and thought her stair banister needed repair. Imagine someone with squeaky hips trying to have sex with a new partner and the ceramic parts start squeaking — ARGHHHHHH a mouse, get off me EEEEEEEK! Or people with ceramic hips trying to bump uglies on a squeaky bed; how is anyone supposed to concentrate on fun when the bedroom sounds like a pet shop? Did the earth squeak for you, darling?
Try grabbing the latest Michael Crichton novel from the library and feel the chill of a dozen steely glares when you squeak through the reading room. How about taking a walk down the aisle on the biggest day of your life and no one can hear Here Comes the Bride for all the squeaking? Being compared with Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz would become tiring rather quickly.
I suppose someone with squeaky hips could make a fortune as a pest exterminator. Sceptical customers would sign up on the spot if they heard mice roaming the house during a quotation. And for parents with teenagers who sneak out the window at night: book them in for hip replacement and you’ll hear them trying to escape every single time. Buying a car? Negotiate a better price by wriggling your legs during the test drive and insist the car makes a terrible noise. You’d also have a fine excuse for bouncing down the office corridors on a pogo stick rather than walking.
Surgeons in their pre-procedure discussion will have to add a disclaimer to patients: “You might experience increased vigour, ability to exercise more frequently and have a renewed lease on life. Oh, and you might squeak like a family of house mice has taken residence in your pelvis. Sign the patient consent form here.”
Crank-o-meter: not funny but it is because it’s not me squeaking
11 may
Last night my just-mended car and I narrowly missed being t-boned by a very small person driving a very big four-wheel drive.
After working through the usual reactions to dodging f$%kwits in charge of monster trucks, I was thinking how people in my ‘virtual’ world would find out if that was my last night on earth. I have lost track of years of bulletin board and forum log-ins from sites long neglected and for hobbies long lost interest in.
How many user names do I have because of the desire to try a new identity, or log-ins related to my usual themes are taken? I’m pedantic about security and don’t keep a list of user names or sites or passwords, and auto log-in is anathema to me. From my web user history or mobile phone contacts, no one close to me in a state of calm – let alone grief – would be able to sift through and determine where I felt I belonged, who I’d like to be told and how to get a message through.
We’ve probably all witnessed fake internet deaths that have made us wiser and more careful, but technology and distance haven’t changed our desire for closeness and a sense of belonging. There are people I’ve never met whose associations and friendships I value immensely: the mental health buddies who help me through bad days, a group of women who are always generous with kindness and selfless support and genuine sisterhood, old workmates who keep in touch, a newish chap who made my day simply by inviting me to a birthday party when he couldn’t have known how isolated I was in my head that day. Someone who shared my dream of applying for the Army Reserve and receiving an e-mail after his swearing-in ceremony so I could be part of the moment, and a friend overseas whose wife was struggling to fall pregnant and their first child is due next week.
I would want you all to know if something happened because you’re far too valuable to think I got bored and drifted away. Modern life is de-centralised from the days of gossip at the local post office and reading the newspaper’s death notices, but there has to be a way, just in case.
Crank-o-meter: far too serious, it seems
09 may
I wouldn’t read this during dinner
I was reading a tampon box today (stop laughing, it was either that or the local newspaper) and the text said ‘approximately 11 grams absorbency’. What the f$%k is that supposed to signify in comprehensible terms?
This estimate must have been worked out by a man with no idea how to measure inconvenience. A woman would have put on the box: ‘Should get you through a few hours so change me before you go to that boring meeting’, or ‘Are you sure you need another one? Make the most of me because you still pay GST’.
Did someone in research and development dry-weigh some prototype tampons, dip into the ubiquitous blue fluid and weigh again? I once did temp work for a medical researcher and saw a product listing of interesting raw materials like flu viruses and phlegm — I don’t remember seeing bulk bottles of blue period replacement fluid or authentic menstrual by-products on the list for measuring tampon capacity.
A long time ago I had a boyfriend who thought it fun to dunk a clean tampon in a pot of beer and suck the beer from it. Do I have to bold the had a boyfriend? Perhaps he was a tampon absorption tester in a previous job and missed the party atmosphere in the lab during Friday night drinks, mean period-having, fun-busting witch I am.
What’s 11 grams in period measurement anyway? Is it when the tampon is comfortable enough to remove without feeling like extracting a vacuum cleaner hose from up there, or when you have only 20 seconds to haul arse to the nearest toilet and change over before Bloodgate 2008 hits?
It must be hard for girls at menarche to work out the timing on 11 grams of gory matter when they’re adapting to their new cycles. Even two grams of blood and guts from a surprise period looks like Edward Scissorhands has been in your underpants. When it’s all compressed into a cylinder of cotton, it could be one gram or 400, who the hell knows?
Women need to take charge of tampon design. A tampon should buzz when fluid hits the core or it reaches a maximum diameter, preferably half an hour before it needs changing. A pleasant humming sensation will shoo those cramps away and make the inconvenience and cost of having periods much easier to bear. More feeling good, more changing tampons, more profit for the company — win, win, win. Stick the 11 gram estimate up your arse and give me a bloody buzz I can measure.
Crank-o-meter: this page is copyright 2008 and don’t steal my idea because this is the fortune-making one, buzz buzz buzz buzz
07 may
I like posting blog entries on odd-numbered days as it provides a mental rhythm and editing routine to work with. Plus, I like mental maths-related habits (interpret that as you will). My mind works to its own schedule though and today I can’t focus on anything for more than 30 seconds. I’ll chain myself to the desk for a while and capture what falls out of the brain custard.
I wonder if a local cafe has the best hazelnut-chocolate cake ever baked. The transformation of pantry ingredients into the rich, dark and blood-surging slab of goodness is alchemical and soothes a distracted soul. Even the chocolate truffle on top is a mini work of art, until I shove it in my mouth and allow its perfect roundness to disintegrate into sludge. Ha, die cake, die!
Fattypants didn’t ride her bike this morning and needs to exercise after work.
Only plonkers refer to themselves in the third person.
Only self-destructive plonker fattypantses who think in the third person are still craving cake.
I need to undertake a manual handling course to lift the swear pig. Today’s IOU is twelve dollars already. Best to not watch the evening news and advertisements for a while.
How f$%king (oops, another two dollars) fantastic was Diana Barnato Walker, who died last week. She eschewed a pampered upbringing, got a pilot’s licence and delivered hundreds of aircraft during World War II, most of which were unarmed and without navigational instruments. When she wasn’t evading the enemy, she was propping up stools in cocktail bars and romancing chaps with dashing names like Humphrey Gilbert and Whitney Straight. Vale.
The black labrador was roaming his beat at the local village shops at lunchtime, tempting the lunch crowd with his shiny button eyes and waggy tail. The sign attached to his collar that says “Do not feed me, I’m too fat” was missing. I think he ate it. Want some of my salad, big black dog?
Why are most men keen on F/M/F threesomes but the majority shirk at the thought of M/F/M? Life’s eternal question. I want it answered and male-centric homophobia and paranoia are no excuses.
The cafe didn’t have hazelnut-chocolate cake. May you be infested with the germs of a million keyboards.
Crank-o-meter: will not be an alcohol-free day
05 may
Recycle the newspaper, not the news
We like yardsticks, or rules of thumb, to put things into perspective. I know my life is better knowing that no piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven times, and blue and green should never be seen, except with a colour in between (preferably pink).
However, one modern-day rule of thumb shits me but keeps making a come-back like last night’s baked beans. It’s the “[insert name of seemingly innocuous object here] … is dirtier than a toilet seat.”
Didn’t this factoid die a long time ago? How many times has it been re-hashed in dumb-arse info-tainment news stories? Why is it back again? Shame on you ABC news for running the story — you were the last bastion of my knowing a bit about what’s going on in the world. I am now dumber for using a brain cell to hear you tell me about a computer keyboard being dirtier than a dunny seat yet again. Not only am I dumber and angrier, I’m becoming more ignorant because I’m out of watchable news services.
Here’s the crankypants news: anything you touch will have body oils, skin cells, maybe a bit of hair and probably food remnants that gazillions of festering little viruses, bacteria and invisible martians are feeding on right now. In fact, they’re having sex on your G and H keys as you read. There, there, saw you lift your hands! Quick, panic. Go to the shop and order a bag of hermaphrodite bacteria in case yours are thriving too much and having orgies on the Q and W keys as well. Spray your house in hospital-grade bleach and cryogenically seal it with plastic so those evil little germy things don’t get you. Alco-wipes are not enough; remove the battery acid from your car and wipe your keyboard and between the keys with it, twelve times. And don’t touch it again. Oh, and have an enema, too, in case you forget how clean your toilet seat is and accidentally sit on your pooey keyboard when nature calls.
Media: please stop shitting me. For every swear word I say I’m putting two dollars into my money pig and I can barely lift the damn thing. I may have to lick the germs off my keyboard to meet my daily nutritional needs because I can’t afford food.
If you keep running this story, I’ll take the swear money, buy prime time ad space and do a live cross to my tongue licking a toilet seat. Dare me.
Crank-o-meter: sick of being shirty
03 may
National Transport Idiocy Week 2008
Going places is destroying the remnants of my sanity. After trying to cope with chocolate-stealing morons and disappearing passengers at an airport, the train system is now about to do my head in.
Sometime between last week and this week a shiny new train was snuck onto my line. And it’s free of charge to travel, thanks to the transport idiots! No one designed space onboard for ticket machines and the unstaffed train stations (all on the line except one) don’t have ticket machines or validation boxes.
I tried the new train earlier in the week.
DisorientedPants: Wow, it’s so big and new looking. Where’s the ticket machine?
SmilingConductor: There isn’t one
ConfusedPants: OK. I have some blank tickets in my purse I can use
LaughingConductor: No validation boxes, either
ConfusedPants: So, how do I use my tickets?
CrazyConductor: You can’t! You have to travel for free!
ConfusedPants: I have to travel for free?
BenevolentConductor: Yes! There’s no space on the carriage for machines and the new system won’t be running until 2010. You’ll probably have to travel for free for that long!
HappyPants: Orroight! Let me test the new seats because I’ll be planting my bum here a lot more often!
Who on earth in a beleaguered, loss-making organisation introduced a service that will bleed even more money? That’s fuckwittery on the grandest of scales, almost worthy of an Order of Meritorious Fuckwittage to Australia.
However, the no-cash-required allure of the train doesn’t make up for of its main disadvantage: it lacks grunt. It really lacks grunt. It’s the can’t-fight-its-way-out-of-a-wet-paper-bag-wuss of the public transport world.
The old train used to lurch from each station in grunting, manly thrusts, like a failed sexual coupling fuelled by too much beer. The new train throttles desperately like the outboard motor of a small fishing boat. I think I can, I think I can. It’s quiet and smooth when it’s up to speed, but moving from the platform is an exercise in faith.
And I can’t hear the new train’s effeminate tooooooot tooooooot from home. The old train’s braying BARRRRRRRP on its warm-up run was a reasonable indicator it would operate on the day and I should get out of bed. The new train has to shuffle and toooooot tooooooot toooooot like an old kettle in a cheap Korean sedan because motorists can’t hear it at rail crossings.
The conductor said it all: “It’s pretty pissweak, isn’t it?”
Yep, and the other three passengers look at me curiously when I giggle after each toooooooot!
Crank-o-meter: toooooooooooooot!
01 may
M’aidez, m’aidez, shithouse journalism alert. Send sub-editors, stat
I know I crap on about being dragged to the saltmines and earning a wage without much in the way of satisfaction, but I still turn up every day and put care into my job because it’s part of my reflection as an individual. In return, it gives me the self-proclaimed right to be righteous and narky when I see others accept salaries in exchange for sloppiness.
However, sometimes people do their jobs so poorly it’s funny in a ‘so bad it’s good’ sense. A workmate nearly turned her newspaper into papier-mâché with tears of laughter when reading some shoddy journalism to me during lunch. In response I spattered her claggy paper with green squiggles of lettuce that escaped during unexpected belly roars. It looked better than the writing on the page.
As much as I try to weave research into blog entries so they aren’t a lazy re-hash, the basis for this laughter has to stand on its own as a shining pool of literary diarrhoea produced by someone doing his job so badly it was outstanding.
Source: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23614146-2862,00.html
Roger Franklin describes the murder scene
April 29, 2008 12:00am
IN the early dusk, as darkness descended and the TV news crews switched on floodlights, everything changed.
Minutes earlier as a cold, wet afternoon faded, the tidy little home at the corner of Burns St and Hastings Rd had been just another modest home on a very modest Frankston street — albeit a street filled with police cars.
But then, as those lights bathed the murder scene in their harsh, white glare, a surreal air took hold.
“It’s like being on a movie set, except it’s not a movie because that poor woman is dead,” said a middle-aged man called George, who had wandered around the corner to do a bit of rubber-necking.
“Incredible, just incredible!”
Like just about everyone else in Frankston, George didn’t know quite what to think.
All through the late morning and afternoon, helicopters darted under low, grey clouds and police with dogs combed the neighbourhood.
In the front yard of her neighbour’s home, where Tracey Greenbury was cornered and had her life blown away by a shotgun blast to the head, forensic cops in blue overalls picked evidence of the kind you don’t want to think about off the grass and stairs.
Meanwhile, on countless radios, reports of a gunman on the loose stabbed a suburb’s fear.
“I’m scared, very scared,” said a neighbour, an elderly woman, who peered through the curtains after hearing the doomed mother’s screams and seeing the killer lumber off.
“He was a grey man, a heavy man, and he runs, runs, runs.
“Who is safe if a lovely mother is murdered in her own home? Suppose he comes back again?”
Privately, residents quoted police as telling them that there was no need for panic — that the killer and victim knew each other, that it wasn’t a case of random homicidal rage.
But in the early evening, with spotlights all focused on the place where a life was snuffed out, such assurances brought small comfort.
More moving by far were the trappings of a stolen life — the dog kennel in the front yard, the comfy chairs for catching the sun, the kids’ trampoline.
“I saw her little girl bouncing all the time on that thing,” a dog walker called Darren said.
“Imagine how she feels, knowing she will never see her mother alive again.”
George, who had come back for another gander at the crime scene, was still thinking Hollywood as a vicious rain began to fall.
“In the movies, they always get the bad guy,” he said.
“This bastard needs to be taken in now, so we can relax.”
I might take the knife that ’stabbed a suburb’s fear’ and jab myself because it’ll be less painful than this prose. Oh, hang on, I might take a steel-tipped blade glistening with a suburb’s panic and rotate it scarily around my own fear, while light armoured vehicles with wheels of grinding black rubber circle the nearby streets, watching, waiting, in case my fear is stabbed in random, horrifying slashes of pain until the paths of terror are running with bright red blood, flowing with the exhausted life from my increasingly frail and innocent body. An opportunity killed, never to have children, never to laugh with family in front of the tele, or watch the grass grow around the clothes line. A fear lost in a street of honest, hard-working fear lovers. Things will never the same in this sleepy suburban neighbourhood. Panic now rules the streets.
F%&k me, that’s harder than it looks. My belly aches.
Crank-o-meter: A surreal air took hold *giggle* *giggle* *snigger*