Update!

So, it's been nearly two months since I've updated.  And even that update was pretty crappy. I can't remember that far back (who am I kidding, I can't even remember what I had for breakfast), so I'll just go through this entire year thus far.

Earlier this year, I was lamenting my joblessness after I quit at the toy store due to lack of hours.  I got a job at a truck stop as a waitress.  For American readers, this place was a bit classier than you probably imagine (but not classy enough to be called an actual restaurant).  I started back at uni around this time.  The job didn't really work well with my uni timetable, and my parents didn't appreciate the fact that I stayed back a few hours every night.  After having one too many coffees thrown at me, I quit.  I had only been there about 2 months, if that.

I had another stint of joblessness, but I used this time to try and focus on uni.  It was nice, but I was running out of money pretty fast.  I applied at a few places, got a few interviews, and finally got a job at a grocery store, as an online shopper.  Basically, my department gets the orders, and my coworkers and I go around and collect the order items off the shelves.  I've been there for about a month and a half I think now.  Still haven't got my discount card, but when I do, it will probably be one of the greatest days of my life.

I also finished the first semester of my 2nd year at uni today!  For the other semesters I finished, I was always so relieved it was over.  This semester went really quickly though, and I'm not sure if it was my improved time planning, or just a better course structure.  Whatever it was, I was significantly less stressed out this semester, despite a few disasters involving group assignments and stupid people. 

So now, I'm at home, lost and unsure of what to occupy my time with.  Currently, I'm experimenting with alcohol.  Green apple UDLs and Agrum taste surprisingly good together.    Probably won't taste so good tomorrow if I'm throwing it up.

Oh well.  It's not like I have anything I need to do tomorrow either.

It's been a while,,,

I think it's been like a month or so since I've last updated.  I'm not sure what made me think to come back, but there's been a lot of stuff I haven't said anything about on here.  Here's what's new.

    Last time I posted, I'm pretty sure I was still looking for a job.  Well, I got a job as a waitress at a truckstop, worked enough in the last month to earn myself $1000, and now I'm quitting.  I know I made such a huge drama about not having a job before, but honestly, I'd rather go back to that than keep working at this place.  It pays $10 an hour (as opposed to my last job paying between $15 and $21 depending on the day), I'm required to do a lot more hours, and during those hours I've been working a crapload more than I think I should considering the pay.  It also helps that they weren't too flexible about me working and going to uni.  So I've quit and my last shift is on Tuesday.

    I'm back at uni for my second year, and holy crap it's getting hard.  For example, my Tuesdays and Thursdays for the last month have consisted of being at uni from 9 to 6, the work from 6:30 to midnight.  Then back at uni the next day.  As a result of my tiredness, and the recent terrible weather conditions, I kind of ruined my bike.  The cars in my area kind of speed around corners, so when there was a speeding car approaching, he swerved his car, I swerved my bike.  I hit a gutter, destroyed the chain, tore off the basket at the back and twisted the handle bar to a 90 degree angle.  As for the damage to me, I got a face full of mud and slime (brilliant idea to break my fall with my face) and my clothes had to be thrown out.  Since then, I've had to walk to uni, which is 5 km a day (or about 3 miles for the Americans).  It's good exercise, but it just makes me so freaking tired that I don't want to go to classes.


When I do turn up to my classes, at least they're somewhat enjoyable.  Statistics (the teacher makes it interesting), Brain and behaviour, health psychology, and learning and behaviour.   It's going to be tough thins semester though.  They actually have fairly high expectations this year.  I may actually have to put some effort in.  Good thing I'm unemployed again.

What else?  Everything else is pretty much the same, I think.  I might try to keep up with posting a bit more, and actually have a topic to talk about.

Australia Day! Also, I have an award!

I've been given an award by Dani-Q, so I'll do that at the end of this post.  Here's a brief update on my life.  

Still no job, but the bag shop at the local shopping centre is apparently looking for casual staff to do 8-10 hours a week, which is perfect for me.  I spoke to the lady, and she seemed really positive.  So I went home, got my resume, and went back there a few hours later.  The lady actually recognised me, which was very encouraging.  I got an email back about a job at a grocery store, and they said their hiring process is on hold until mid-February, so that sucks. Other than that, nothing new.

WARNING:  THIS PARAGRAPH IS A BIT GRAPHIC.

I went to the doctors about my digestion-related problems.  He referred me to a pathologist, who had to take blood, urine and faeces tests.  The pathologist wasn't very nice at all.  But she had to deal with my faeces, so I think we all know who came out on top.  BUT, she told me the sample had to be frozen, so I had to do it all again.  Of course, I got stage fright  and didn't go to the toilet for 2 days after that.  I finally did, handed in my jar of poo, and the lady thanked me for it.  I laughed like a demon.  I know it's part of her job, but it must suck.

 Since it's Australia Day, and I am Australian, I took part in the customary ritual of consuming a shitload of alcohol.  Being sick to begin with, I didn't consume as much as what I planned, but I still attempted to have fun.  There were too many people in town, and line-ups of about 30 mins for each club.  One place had a line for about 2 hours, apparently.  Also, thank god we had a designated driver, because the taxi line went the whole way down the street.  No thank you.

But now, today actually IS Australia Day, and I'm not doing anything Australia-related for it. Oh well, I think last night made up for it.

Last thing before I do the award bit, I just received a text message from the boyfriend.  He is apparently making a cake. He won't tell me what flavour.  I fear for the world.  This will not end well.

And now for the award! 

 Life Is Good

Apparently, since I have been given an award I have to answer questions and pass it on?  I think I can do that.

If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing this? If you aren't anonymous, do you wish you started out anonymously, so that you could be anonymous now?

To be honest, it doesn't really matter to me whether I'm anonymous or not.  I mean, I haven't given away all the details to me life, so to the casual reader, I sort of am.  If you wanted to go all out stalker on me, it wouldn't be too hard to find me though.

Describe an incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

I continue to argue, even when I know I'm wrong.  Mostly with my parents.  And if my side of the argument is going badly, I blame someone else and they cop it worse than I do.

What do you see when you really look at yourself in the mirror?

I see a sack of flesh with limbs and a face and other appendages.  I also stare at my eyes until they look more grey than blue.  Then I notice my terribly shaped eyebrows and run away before I'm tempted to shave them off.

What is your favourite summer cold drink?

I liked Pepsi Max, until I realised that it was one of the things that makes my digestive system do weird stuff, so I'm trying to cut down on it.

When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

I have very long showers.

Is there something that you still want to accomplish in your life?

Of course!   I haven't even had a real job yet!  Let alone a life, proper relationships, kids, etc etc.  All that normal life stuff people do when they have lives.

When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the shy person or always ditching?

Depends on the class really.  And who was in the class.  But I was usually seen as the overachiever, but only because I consistently turned up for class, and did the work (never the homework though).

If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what would you see?

When someone I was very close to was drunk, and said some very hurtful things that they didn't mean.  Even though they apologized, we were both hurt by the end of it, and it started the decline of our friendship.  We don't even talk anymore.  It sucks, because they were one of my best friends, but that incident brought out all the problems we had ever had. And don't worry, people who are reading this.  It's none of you.  You don't even know this person.

Is it easy for you to share your true self in you blog, or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people and events?

I share my true self I guess.  It's sort of a shallow picture, because I try not to name too many people, but what I do tell is like the top layer of my true self.

If you had the choice to sit down and read a book or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

Read.  I can't talk on the phone.  I hate it.  My grandmother told my mum it was like talking to a rock when you're on the phone to me.  I'm a little bit better now, but I still hate it.

So that's it for the award bit.  I have to give it to other people now?  How about Morgan from the Adorkable Ditz' Missteps.  She always reads my posts.  I like her.  She's nice.

18th of November : What day is it?

Now, this whole "new day begins at 12:00" is confusing the shit out of me.  I believe my most recent post was titled 15th of November.  Except I thought I wrote it yesterday, or the day before.  I don't fucking know anymore.  NO WAIT.  I started writing it on the 15th, and midnight came around, and it ended up being finished and posted on the 16th.  Now, my dilemma is, where the fuck did the 17th go?  Or the 16th?  I lost a day somewhere.  Is it actually the 18th today?

HOLY SHIT.  It's past midnight.  That's why it's the 18th.  Right, I've got it now guys.  Don't worry.

Now that I know what day it is (I believe it is currently Thursday) I can continue on with the bits and pieces of my last few days that I actually remember.  Now, a disclaimer.  You may read this, and assume I did some silly things under the influence of alcohol.  I was drunk, but not once did I lose control of what I was doing.  The days and times are just jumbled up because I don't pay attention to it anyway.

Now.  Let's start with Monday night, or what I shall refer to as Monday night.  I was talking to a person over facebook chat.  He was a guy who I sort of knew from years back.  He was a few grades above me in high school.  I added him to seee if he would accept.  After seeing the friend request, he sent me a message asking if I knew him.  I did what any decent internet stalker would do, and I avoided all direct communication.  I'm a stalker, not a talker.

So I ignored this message, and completely forgot about it.  He added me anyway, about a week later.  Monday night, he starts talking to me on facebook chat.  It's basically just me saying "oh, no I don't know you, I just stalk you, but not like hardcore stalking, since I don't know anything about you".  I think he was dissappointed at my fail-stalk.  I don't really have much to add, but I'll keep you all in the know.

What else happened?  Monday night... Tuesday comes next I think.  So I do nothing for most of Tuesday.  I decide that I'm going shopping for booze and shoes (booze and shooze?)  So I text people, and they're all lame and doing exams and other stuff that responsible people do.  Fuck that.  So I go to the bus stop, and I wait.  I get on the bus, off the bus, and I start shopping.  I don't find any decent clothes, so I look for new shoes to go with my old clothes.  Unsuccessful.  I get gel inserts for my old shoes instead.  I also get a new town-bag.  Town-bags have some pretty specific requirements.  Has to have a long strap, not be very big.  Has to match outfit and shoes, MUST have inside zip pocket.  Anyway, I got one.  So I've got my shoe stuff and a bag, so now I need booze.  I go to Dan Murphy's, the alcohol grocery store that I may have mentioned previously.  I buy my drinks, totalling $136 (to be fair, $100 of that was because I wanted cash out).

After that, I catch a bus home, and get in the shower.  The Cleaning Nazi comes home and screams at me about going to the dentist.  The appointment was at 4pm, and it was about 3:15pm at the time.  So I screamed back.  I got ready as fast as possible, and she kept screaming, until she realised me were going to be 45 minutes early.  We go to the dentist, normal dentist stuff happens.  They say I have crooked teeth, and that I should go to the oral hygienist, but I can't get an appointment until next year.  Oh well.

Go home, and I do my hair and makeup.  I put on outfit 1, then outfit 2, then back to outfit 1.  I show the Cleaning Nazi, and I get the thumbs up.  Then she does some weird gesture towards my breasts, so I change to outfit 2.  She tells me she likes outfit 2, but 1 was better.  So I change again.  Then Dad comes home, and there's more breast gestures, so I stick to outfit 2.

I get ready, and we pick up the friends and go to one of their cousin's friend's place.  So, a friend of a friend of a friend's place.  I didn't know any of them.  My solution?  Get drunk.  And so I did.  There were faces being made at me, but I was drunk, so who cares?  I know what they were probably thinking, but oh well.

I was talking to some guy about his tattoos.  On one of his arms he had a sleeve of norse mythology symbolism.  At the top near his shoulder, he was telling me the wolf was Thor.  Now, I may have been wasted, but I knew damn well that the wolf in Nordic mythology is Fenrir.  I just hope he knew that, and was simplifying it for me.  He then told me about the tattoo on his chest.  He reckons it was a Nazi symbol, but it didn't look like any kind of Nazi-related imagery I've ever seen.  Just the term "Nazi tattoo" had my friends wide-eyed with horror.  I wasn't fussed, since he was full of shit anyway.  He also had an Autobots symbol on the back of his neck.  Now that's just lame. 

Autobot symbol from Transformers

When it got to around 9 or 10 at night, the maxi taxi turned up.  I didn't want to waste drinks, so I sculled a few and shoved one in my bag before I left.  We got in the taxi, and went to town.  We went to Cactus Jack's, a mexican themed bar and restaurant.  They have $9 jugs.  Of course, this asks for many jokes about how I don't need their jugs, I have plenty of my own.  I was talking to some guy called Grant I think.  He was 28, and a former geography teacher, now a union representative.  Weird, I forget that 28 year olds are still young enough to go nightclubbing.  In any other situation, 28 is not old at all.  In night clubs, its just weird that I socialise with people 10 years older than me, and they aren't condescending douches to me.

Anyway, we meet up with a bunch of physiotherapy students (the friends I'm with are physios).  They go about their usual business, and I try to learn their names.  That goes fairly well.  I also start feeling bad about the fact that I never mentioned my plans with the bf, so I do a bit of drunk dialling, and he knows exactly what's up.

Now this is about the point in the night where I stop taking note of the order of events.  We leave Cactus.  I see a bunch of people I know, and one of them has a pair of dice (die?).  One of them has an action (tickle/rub/kiss etc) and the other has a body part.  I rolled them, and got an ear massage.  Nice.

I ran into that crazy guy I talked about AGES ago, the one who started crying when I left to go home.  He tried to get me to go inside with him, but I had to find my friends, who I had somehow lost.  I found them again, then stuff happened.  I don't even know.  There was a guy called Troy with a lip piercing, and he asked if my boobs were real.

Skip ahead in time, and my friends are getting pizza.  I find the guy with the dice again, and I hug him as if I hadn't seen him an hour earlier.  There's some old guy called Gino talking to me.  I'm not very nice to him, but he's like 50-something.  I don't have to be nice to old guys hitting on me and trying to buy me pizza.

Then I don't even remember what comes after this.  Not because I was blind drunk, just because all the clubs are pretty similar, and I haven't been going long enough to tell the difference.

Somewhere around this time, my friends are trying to get into contact with Danique.  I may have even called her, and I called her a pussy.  Quite a lot.  Because she refused to come to the other side of the street, where all her friends were.  Pussy.  She went home at like 1 I think.  That's what she said in the message she sent me.  I think.  I may not have read it. But anyway, I last until 3, when we all pile in the designated driver's clown car and go home.

I wake up this morning, and I stumble around as if I'm still drunk.  I can't feel my toes.  Other than that, I feel pretty good.  I get on facebook, and everyone else who was out that night is doing the same as me.  Assessing injuries and eating strange things for breakfast.  I do pretty much nothing for the rest of the day, until 6, when I go to work.  One of the girls I work with was out in town with me, and I saw her a few times.  Apparently I kept telling her about how the gel inserts in my shoes were falling out.  Sure enough, I went from 4 at the start of the night, to 1 at the end.  So I wasn't doing any drunk rambling.  It was all true.

Now, that pretty much updates you from Monday, all the way to now, which is very early Thursday morning.  When it's daylight, I think I'll go shopping again.  Thursday night, I believe there may be some sort of a plan for going to a tavern, or the uni club or something.  I don't know, but I'm all for it, since I'm not working.

Now, it's like 1am.  My parents aren't too happy about my weird sleeping pattern, but who cares.  I get enough sleep, just not at the same time as them.  As long as I get to work, I don't think it should matter what I do for the rest of the time.  I'm going to end this here, since I can barely keep my eyes open.

This post's word count = 1744
Total November word count = 26, 922

10th of November: Just some thoughts.

Last night, after I was done with the part 2 blog post, inspiration hit me like a kick in the face.

I was laying in bed frantically typing away on my little Hiptop about all these story ideas I had.  Well, they weren't ideas for a new story, but old ideas that have come back into my mind.  Everyone's been talking to me about writing books and doing NaNoWriMo and stuff, and I've been thinking about my own story.  I used to have a very clear idea of the plot, and where it was going, but now it's just small disjointed bits and pieces.  In my mind, I'm still cutting out characters that don't belong.  I'm even considering cutting out the main character and switching it to another one.  It's a weird situation.  Like, you know when there's a group of characters, and the main character is usually the leader of the group?  In this story of mine, there's the main character, who is separate to the rest of the group and their leader.  It's weird.  GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.  Just thinking about it is making me want to write.

This is what I had to use to write down my ideas.

Since I'm in the mood, I might as well check out this program called yWriter5.  I downloaded it, but I haven't really tried to use it yet, since I haven't written anything fictional in about a year from what I remember.  Just from looking at it, it would be good if you were into the "highly organised, keep tabs on all characters at all times" kind of writing.  As much as I'd like to be organised, I'd prefer to just write.  It's good to do something like that later on, maybe like half way in, just so you know that you haven't forgotten any characters, and they haven't mysteriously disappeared due to your laziness. Personally, I'd just rather write my little bits and pieces, string them together, then be in awe of the terrible mess I left behind.

Enough about that.

I thought I had my anatomy exam today.  I was all ready to get in and study this morning, then fail in the afternoon, then go to work afterwards.  I looked at the calendar bit on my phone, and wondered why I put my exam on the wrong day.  Then I realised it wasn't the calendar that was wrong, but my brain.  I checked the exam timetable, then texted a girl I know who is also doing anatomy, and the exam is on FRIDAY.  THANK GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.

That gives me like a whole 2 days to pretend to study.  Cool.

I was kind of annoyed about how I was supposed to reach 20,000 words today but I couldn't because of the exam.  Now that it's out of the way for the moment, 20 000 here I come!

First, watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXlzci1rKNM

A radio program held a sort of talent show for homeless people, and they found this guy - Daniel Mustard.  Now, despite being homeless, hairy, and wearing strange hats, he has talent.  If the amount of raw passion in this video doesn't get to you, then have a look at him now, nearly a year later.  He went to rehab, is no longer homeless, and he doesn't abuse drugs or alcohol.  This video is him clean, sober, and doing a preview of his new EP coming out soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPBTaX7fn2M

Before anyone says "How can he be homeless if he has a guitar/access to a computer etc etc", he was given the guitar by the radio station, who is now funding him to do his EP.  He gets on the computer, and has a facebook page because he uses public library computers.


Moving on, the Cleaning Nazi is hooked on the tv show True Blood.  I first heard about it years ago when Dani-Q was telling me about this show she was watching, about a mind-reading chick called Sookie and a vampire called Bill.  Now, just from that description, it sounds pretty bad.

Anyway, I continued on with my life, until I decided to watch the first episode.  I ended up watching the whole first season.  I wouldn't say I was addicted, just interested enough to want to see where it was going.  I got halfway through the second season, then lost interest and stopped watching.

When the Cleaning Nazi found out about it, she asked my cousin what it was about.  She told her it was soft-core porn (which it kind of is, but they made it seem like I was a porn addict).  Of course, she didn't want her daughter watching that rubbish, even though I had already decided it was too crappy to keep watching. 

To set her straight, I made her watch it.  And now she can't stop.  She keeps saying "oh, I don't like it, but I want to see what happens".  You may call me a hypocrite, because I said the same thing, but the difference is that I stopped about 2 episodes into season 2.  She watches about 3 episodes a night, and gets angry with me because the 4th season hasn't been filmed yet.  Yes, apparently that's MY fault.

It's a bit ridiculous though.  In the town where this is set, everyone is either a mythological creature or a drug addict.  Or sometimes both, in the case of the in-bred meth-panthers. Yes, meth-panthers.  Panther people who are on meth.  It must have taken a genius to come up with that.  I couldn't come up with something stranger if I tried.

Also, look at the main character's teeth.

I can't stop staring.

I know that she can't help it, and she was born that way, blah, blah, blah.  But you'd think that if she wanted to be an actress, she would fix any physical oddities that she could?  Its not like she can't afford it.    I can't decide whether I think she's pretty or not.  It really depends on the episode, and the angle, and whether her mouth is closed or not.  Like this photo above, Anna Paquin can look pretty scary.  But as you can see below, she looks pretty good sometimes too.

But the point of bringing True Blood up is the hilarious accents, particularly in relation to the character's names.  Bill is pronounced Beel, Sookie is Sookeh, Sam is Saym, and Tara is Terra.  I seriously thought her name was Terra until I saw the credits halfway in season 2 and my mind exploded all over the place.

I know that I probably have a weird accent to most, since a South African friend's mother told me that she expected every Australian to sound like me.  So, I guess I shouldn't be one to judge the accents of other people.  I think it's just because none of the actors on the show actually have a real southern accent, so it seems a lot worse than what it could be.

That's pretty much all I wanted to say about True Blood. 










Is that space large enough that you know I'm going to start a new topic?

I've noticed a trend with blogs.  They're usually female writers.  They have an aspiration to eventually become a published author, and they put excepts of their stories on their blogs.  They are generally students of some kind.  Quite a lot of them have children, or autistic people in their families.  Or autistic children.  Either way, from what I've seen by continually hitting the Next blog button, is that there's a lot of people with autism in their families.  And they all blog about it.  I find that odd.  Their blog descriptions generally include the words "neurotic", "rant", "insanity", all that sort of stuff.  In real life, these sorts of things are bad, and get you in a lot of trouble.  In a blog however, weirdness, mental instability, and various other psychological conditions make you cute and quirky, just like every one else.  I'm not taking a shot at anyone personally, but these words are majorly over-used.  They are also serial daters.  I'm beginning to wonder if blog writers just go on ridiculous dates  just so they can blog about it.  Where do they even find these people?  They meet people, go on a date, meet a new person, go on a date etc etc.  It just keeps going.  How many people do you meet on an average day?  How many of these people do you date?  How many of these people do you NOT date?  I don't understand how its done.  I think a wizard did it.


Speaking of wizards, there's a group on facebook, its called "Harry Potter is a bit unrealistic. I mean a ginger kid with 2 friends".  I laughed pretty hard at that, despite my natural red hair.  But that's not what I wanted to talk about.  

Look at them!  How come they've grown and changed so much, and I still feel exactly the same as my 2001 self?  It's not fair!   Why do they get to grow up?  And why did no one kill Emma Watson for those god-awful outfits?  Look at that jumper!


They're all so different now.  Emma Watson has all these photoshopped nudes of her, Rupert Grint is doing sex scenes in movies, and Daniel Radcliffe is a total skirt chaser.  Despite his short stature, he seems to be proud of his ability to get his co-workers into bed.  Good for him.  I'd be more impressed if he could do it WITHOUT being the richest child star ever.


So, I  don't think I'm going to hit 2000 words for my daily word count, so I'll settle for the 1667 word count for normal people who have stuff to do with their lives.  As for the 20,000 total, I'm not sure if I've hit it.   Haven't done the maths yet.  I've noticed that Dani-Q is falling behind a bit because she's lazy she has to study.  She also has an anonymous hater who just kind of says stuff, and doesn't really put in too much effort.  I have my suspicions about who it is, and if I'm right, they just want a reaction from her.


Word count for this post = 1676
Total November word count = 19, 814

9th of November: Must....Keep...Goingggggg

I really don't want to blog today.  At all.  Unfortunately, I was too tired to continue yesterday, so I'm behind on yesterday too.  Over all, I'm still ahead on my total word count I think, but I'll soon be behind.  I think after today, if I don't make the word count, I'll be behind.

I have my criminology exam today, at 6pm.  Because of this ridiculous time, I had to tell work I couldn't do tonight's night fill shift. So there's a good $70 or so gone from my potential bank account.  Oh well.  I'm still working about 24 hours this week, so I'll be well on my way to saving up for that car.  I'm obviously not looking for a new car, because my price range is around $2000.  Once I drive around an old shitbox for a while, and I get my license and everything, then my parents have promised to buy me a decent car. I don't know if they will, but I'll harrass them anyway.

BUT

There was an interesting discussion last night on Facebook last night, about a certain New Zealand expat/deserter who was bagging out the county she has lived in for about 6 years now.  And as a strong patriot of the country she lives in, I had to blog about it.

NOTE:  As with many things I say, it's not personal at all.  I object to what a person can SAY, not the person themselves.  It's all intended to be in good fun.  Some parts may seem racist, but no harm is intended.  I don't believe that some of Australia's actions against Aborigines were right, but we've been trying to fix it for god knows how long, and it just keeps going.


She started off by talking about how she couldn't enter a competition because she wasn't an Australian citizen.  I'd say that's fair enough.  If they wanted someone from another country to win, they would open the competition to that country, right?

Some comments are made along the lines of "ha ha, suck shit".  She continues on to say that she doesn't want to be an Australian, and she feels sorry for us all.  Now, what the hell.  She's the one who left her country to come to this place.  And I'd like to point out that you only ever hear about people from New Zealand coming to live in Australia, never the other way around.  And the majority of these New Zealanders are taking advantage of our lax immigration laws so they can escape debt. Australians go over there for holidays, then come back after about 2 weeks.  A month at the most. Hmm, I wonder why?

When people start telling her to leave, she backtracks and says its a nice place, with some nice people, but it has no culture.   Now, you can't throw around words like "culture" and expect that everyone agrees with you.

Since I'm lazy and went to wikipedia, here's a few definitions of culture.

The word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

• Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

I know that this particular person is referring to the first definition, and I suppose she has a point there.  But she needs to take into account that our country has only escaped British rule in the last 100 years.  We've had 100 years to form our "high culture" of fine arts, and Europe, which you keep comparing us to, has had got at least 900 years on us.  I don't think any comparison should be made.  Come back in 900 years, then we'll talk.  Considering the fact that we're so far behind on European culture, I'd say we're doing damn well with what we've been given.

Now.  Here's the tricky bit.  As Australians define our "culture", it would be most in tune with the third definition of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that define us.  In that sense, I don't think there's a single country on Earth that has MORE of a culture than us.  Australian patriotism is unbelieveable.  It's everywhere.  People bag out the guys with Southern Cross tattoos, but you can't deny that it stands for something.  Even if the constellation is visible to the entire southern hemisphere, it's still considered a symbol of Australian patriotism, and of Australia itself, due to all of our Aboriginal stories that incorporate it. 

I think that the backbone of Australian culture comes down to war.  Our country has one of the best armies on the planet.  We may not have the best numbers, but we have the attitudes and mindset for it.  Our soldiers are famous for their efforts at Gallipoli.  Yes, I know that ANZAC stand for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.  which is exactly why I'm surprised that a New Zealander has the balls to have a go at a country so historically linked to her own.

In case you don't know about the story of Gallipoli, here's a summarised version.  The British sent boatloads of Australian and New Zealander men to land on a certain beach at Gallipoli.  Of course, the British were being complete twats and dumped them on a beach with a massive cliff on it.  And the enemy was on top of the cliff.  With machine guns.  Good job, Brits.  Our soliders failed their mission over all, since they were pretty much slaughtered whilst climbing that cliff.  BUT.  Quite a few survived, and they stuck it out, despite the war conditions (duh), the rampant disease and malnutrition, and the unsurmountable odds.  They eventually got the order to retreat, and they came up with an ingenious plan that meant that their escape was completely unnoticed.  They rigged up some machine guns, and sent out a group to play cricket in an a spot where the enemy could see them.  While they were playing cricket, and the enemy was watching the game, the ANZACs took off.  They packed up their game, and went home.


Since then, the Aussies have always been proud of their war efforts, and the virtues displayed by our soliders is something that all Australians, even now, nearly 100 years later, try to reflect.  Even apart from our history of war, our families all come from labourers, famers, miners, and other kinds of working men.    On my mother's side of the family alone, we have found the stories of several men who embody the sought after characteristics of the Australian man. 

My mother is right into doing family history stuff with my great Aunt, and they've found some interesting stuff.  One guy, I don't remember his name, but he was a soldier.  He went to war, and eventually got kicked out of the army for too much drinking, fighting with other soldiers, and promiscuity (and for having gonorrhea).  Now, how Australian is that?  Another one of my relatives, Albert Vollenweider, discovered copper on Mt. Garnet, and was eventually ripped off by a business man who took all his ownership rights in the 1800s.  Vollenweider's diaries about what he found are still being held by this business man's relatives, who are desperately trying to fend off my great Aunt from getting them back. 

At this point in the thread on Facebook, its a bunch of people having a go at her about how her opinions are based on blogs and the history channel.  Which is entirely true. I'm pretty certain that she too will admit that.

Someone else brings up our history and racism.  What they're referring to is our on-going issues with the Australian Aborigines.  Back when we were still British,  they dumped their convicts here, on a massive desolate rock (which happened to be a great place for farm land, mining and city expansion, with the best beaches in the world, the British clearly didn't think it out too well).  There just so happened to be some native people already here.  What was the response of the British?  Kill the fuckers.

When you're opponents know the land like the back of their hand, it's not always a good idea to kill them all.  Anyway, many spears were thrown, guns were shot, and a lot of people died on both sides.  This continues on, and many different policies were used to try and settle it all down.  It didn't work.  Even today, people still have issues with it all.  Yeah, all right.  The Brits stole your kids and tried to make them live in the British way.  That's kind of because you had 40,000 years (yes, forty thousand years)  in Australia, and you couldn't get your shit together and progress past the tribal stage. 

Now, as for present day racism.  Yes, we do have some issues there.  As do every country in the world.  In Townsville, we have the particular issue of racism against Aborigines.  Now, it's important to note that no one has an issue against the ones with an education, jobs, and a respectable way of presenting themselves.  It's the ones that are drunk, on drugs, with six kids, no job, and they hang around the mall screaming and urinating on bench seats.  It's not because they're black.  It's because they're drunk, on drugs, with six kids, no job, and they hang around the mall screaming and urinating on bench seats.  Regardless of the colour of their skin, anyone who does that is trash.  There was a story in the news paper the other day about an Aboriginal woman who was drunk outside a fancy cafe.  She picked fights with everyone who walked past, until she found another drunk Aboriginal lady.  They proceeded to fight, fall over, strip their clothes off and scream on the ground until they were arrested.  Black or white, that's no way to behave.

Now the Aborigines may be all hung up about the Brits invading their country years ago, but that's no excuse to do what they do.    Are they singling out every single white person and giving them individual pay back for someone else's actions, hundreds of years ago?  Did my mother get attacked by a young Aboriginal kid because she was white?  Did I get sexually assaulted by an Aboriginal man in broad daylight simply because I am on his ancestor's native territory (which is now a busy main road)?  Does that give them the right to do whatever they like, to who ever they like for no apparent reason?

Australians don't hate Aborigines because they're black.  We hate the jobless, drunk, uncivilised, rapists, regardless of race.  The majority of them just happen to be Indigenous.  We hate the white ones just as much.

Another racism issue that happened a few years ago is somewhat similar in result.  The Cronulla race riots.  Even though it may have looked like a Australia vs. Lebanon free-for-all battle royale, originally it was something very different.  It started off when large groups of young men (who just so happened to be Lebanese) began raping and brutally bashing our women, terrorizing our neighbourhoods, and destroying our cities.  Even if they were white, people would go out and stop these monsters, because these sorts of things just aren't cool.  Since the actual perpetrators were Lebanese, the police didn't want to get involved because of racism issues.   So the Aussie guys from that area wanted to stop them instead.

It was originally to go after that particular gang that did all these horrible things.  Then, when the Lebanese community banded together and started burning our flag, in our own country, all hell breaks loose.  After that, any person, Australian or Lebanese, innocent or not, was in danger of being killed.  It's not like it was just Aussies going out and beating up poor little defenceless Lebanese people.  They disrespected our country, our land, our property and our women.  Of course Australians will retaliate.

As for our racism compared to the rest of the world, particularly Europe?  Do I really need to say anything about the Holocaust?  The Crusades?  I'd say those things are far worse than anything Australia can mange.

And of course, there's racist people in every country.  It's not neccessarily racism, but the French are world famous for being intolerant assholes to anyone who doesn't speak French fluently. And Aussies are world famous for how laid-back and nice they are to people of all cultures (unless they're alcoholics, rapists, or flag burners, I'd like to see a country that DOESN'T hate that).

Now, enough about racism.  The image that we're undereducated.  Seriously? 

Watch this, and tell me Australians are the uneducated ones.

Nothing against Americans, of course.  But I'd say that the education problems over there are far worse than anything we have over here. They still manage to be the greatest political power in the world, even with all their issues.

Also, the guy who invented Gardasil, the vaccine that prevents Cervical Cancer, he was an Aussie, you know.  Just throwing that out there.  We can't be too uneducated if we have people who have developed things that prevent cancer!

I'm getting sick of talking about Australia.  I haven't even gone on to the country itself.  Eventually, I'll muster up some more passion and keep on going about this.  For now, I've done today's word count, and I really need to study.

Once again, don't take it personally.  This isn't a serious post.  It's all absolutely true, but I don't intend for it to be taken as something mean, or hurtful.  I'm just defending the country that I love.  But we Australian don't take kindly to foreigners bagging out our country, especially if you've been living in it for years.  It's a given that we're going to dish out a smart-ass, tongue-in-cheek response about our patriotism.

Word count for this post = 2348

Word count total for November = 17, 612

November 7th: Anosmia

I've finally updated yesterday, now I have to start from scratch for today, 7th of November.

I've decided to talk about anosmia - which is the lack of a sense of smell.

This may seem pretty random, but I am in fact anosmic.  Which is pretty much the only reason why I know about it.

Don't get me wrong.  I can enjoy food, and I can taste stuff.  In fact, flavour is 75% smell, and 25% taste.  So when you eat, you're mostly smelling, and I'm just getting all taste.  So in a way, I can taste better than you smelling-people, because I'm not confused by scent.

Somewhat embarrassing life story time!  When I was little, all my friends would completely over react whenever there was a bad smell in the air.  Normal little kid's "OMG EWWW" kind of reaction.  This continued on until I was about 12 or 13.  At this age, I had an experience which is burnt into my brain for many reasons.  There was a girl that was always picked on by people for whatever reason they could find.  She pulled out a permanent marker, which apparently smelled pretty bad.  You know how every classroom had the ADHD ringleader asshole who stirred everyone up?  He decided to go on and on about this smell for about 20 minutes, resulting in everyone in the class walking out because it was so gross.  The only people left in the classroom was me, the girl with the pen, and the teacher who called me a very mature young woman for not picking on the girl.  I wasn't trying to be nice, I just couldn't smell it.  It's interesting, because even now, that girl that was picked on still gets picked on by a lot of people, but she's become a complete bitch and learned to deal with it, by being mean to everyone else.  And that ADHD asshole?  I've been dating him for nearly a year now.  Funny how things turn out. 

When I was sick, I refused to take painkillers because of my throat (another long story), so the parents would either crush it up in honey (before they believed me about the extreme discomfort honey gives me) or they would tell me to block my nose and swallow it.  I never understood this, because it did nothing at all for me.  I now get why they would say that.  Because for normal people, you can't "taste" when your nose is blocked.  Really, you're doing nothing BUT tasting, you just can't smell it. But it didn't work for me :(

Whenever I was sick and didn't feel like eating, my parents would always say, "food never tastes good when you're sick, because you can't taste it".  It always tasted normal to me, but I've seen how badly my family reacts to food when they're sick and they can't "taste" it.  I just laugh at them now.

Also, this bit is a bit gross, but it gives you a clearer picture of what I'm trying to say.  A kid in primary school (elementary, for the Americans) crapped his pants in front of an entire auditorium of 10-year-olds.  Everyone else was grossed out by the smell, which I imagine was putrid by other people's reactions.  The worst part?  Rather than smelling it, I could taste it.  Yeah, that's right.  I can taste it when kids poo their pants.  Isn't that disgusting?






AAAAAAAAAAAANYWAY
  Have a picture to break it up a bit.

This continued on through my life.  I was embarrassed by it.  I thought that I just wasn't doing it right, or I hadn't learned how to smell things.  Or that I had a really weak sense of smell or something.  Either way, it never crossed my mind that I DIDN'T have it.  I didn't think it was possible.

 I think it was about grade 10 or 11, and I was about 15.  Dani-Q probably doesn't realize this, but she was one of the first people who made me take notice of my disability, indirectly, of course.  The conversation wasn't about me at all.  She used the term "mouth-breather" as an insult.  People laughed about it and thought nothing of it.  I thought about it a lot though.  I didn't think that there was anything wrong with breathing through your mouth.  I mean, it's far more efficient, you get more air, faster.  And it's not like there's any benefit to using your nose.  And that's when I realised there WAS a benefit to most people.  That's why it was an insult.  It's like saying their too stupid to use their god-given (it's just a phrase, I'm not being religious) gift of a functioning sense of smell.

I probably was overthinking it WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much, but it made me realise that if I still hadn't worked out how to recognize smells by then, it wasn't going to happen.  I just assumed I was a freak of nature,  that no one else would have it. 

I continued on in life, with my parents and friends testing me out until one by one, they started to believe me.  But people still didn't really believe me, because they hadn't heard of anyone else not having a sense of smell.

I was reading a book one day, last year I think.  I came across a word I'd never seen before, and that doesn't happen too much.  I looked it up, and found out that  the word - anosmic - refers to a lack of the sense of smell.  A  little more research, and I found that there's plenty more people like me.

When its a condition right from birth (or I assume mine is, since I don't remember even having it) it's classified as congenital anosmia, which sounds like an STI.  I think its the "genital" bit.

As my research has indicated, there is no apparent cause, and no cure.  Websites talk a lot about the dangers of no smell, because we can't tell when there's a gas leak (which isn't true, I could TASTE it when the barbecue's gas cylinder was leaking), or when there's a fire, or when food is spoiled. 

I read an article once about how a restaurant had to be evacuated once, because all these people were becoming sick and vomiting and passing out because of a smell.  When people got out their gas masks to check it out, it was just an anosmic kitchen-hand cleaning out the freezer with chemicals.  I laughed at that.

Something else that I DIDN'T laugh at - a man was kicked out of the police force for being anosmic, he couldn't smell drugs or alcohol on a person he was trying to arrest.  I can see why it would be a problem, but I don't think the guy should have LOST HIS JOB because of it.

Another issue with no sense of smell - you can't tell when you smell.  I'm constantly telling my friends that I won't be offended if they tell me I smell, because I won't know otherwise.  This of course, causes issues when I get people to help me buy perfume and deodorant, and this conflicts with someone else's opinions.  I can't make my own decision, so I have to rely on the outcome of their dispute.  Which sucks.

When you look around for information, there's a lot of stories about people "coming out" to their parents about their condition.  It may not seem like a big deal, but parents don't know about their child's condition until the child itself is aware, and the parents usually don't believe their child. 

There's also a type of anosmia which happens after an illness, or a blow to the head, etc.  They experience loss of appetite, massive weight loss, depression, and lowered sex drive, among other things.  I find it strange that people have trouble adjusting to a part of my everyday life.

There's not much else to say, except that I may from time to time ask people to describe smells.  Which makes them very confused.

Even after I knew I couldn't smell, I still couldn't get used to the idea that everything around me had this extra dimension that I can't appreciate.  I was tripping so hard when I found out that bread has a distinct smell.  It really doesn't look like it would smell, since it's so plain.  Also, fruit.  I was very surprised to find out that strawberries, oranges, and bananas had a smell.  I think it's because they're usually served cold, and warm/cold is about as far as my smelling distinctions go.  I can't explain it well, but "cold" smells are chemical-like, or unnatural.  "Warm" smells are natural things, like food and feces (long story of how I found that out).  When fruit is served cold, I always assumed it wouldn't smell as much as it would if it were room temperature.  Now that I think about it, that makes no sense whatsoever.  But that's just how I think. 

So, bread, fruit, hair, and grass. I really can't imagine HOW these things could possibly smell.

And don't say "it smells the same as how it tastes" because that's not true.  You're just smelling it and confusing it with taste.

Right, I only have a few more words before I make today's minimum word count.

I was just looking at the website NeverSmell.com because it has a "personal stories" section on there, and it reminded me of something else.  You know in school how you had to write stories about how something looks, sounds, tastes, feels and smells?  They suck.  Lucky I was good at bullshitting.  Also, in science classes, most recently biology, we often had to identify things by smell.  I think one of our experiments depended entirely on how bad something smelled after a certain period of time.  Other people were gagging with the test tube about a metre away, and I pretty much shoved it up my nose and didn't react.

Well.... I think I'm sick of typing now.  I've got my psychology assignment tomorrow, so I'd better get some sleep.

My total word count is now 14, 488.

4th of November: It's nearly Christmas!

Now, as most of you know, I work at a toy store. Ordinarily, people go "OMG cool" or "it must be so fun to work there".  No.  Think about it.  There's fun stuff freakin' everywhere, and you can't play with it, you have to get as much of it out of the store as possible.  That being said, it's still more fun than wherever you work.

Since it's approaching Christmas, we put out our 45 page catalogue yesterday.  It's not even the Christmas one.  It's like the pre-Christmas one, and its 45 pages.  It ends on November 16th.  What a waste of paper.  If it lasted to DECEMBER 16th, then yeah, that could work.  It probably takes until December to go through the whole bloody thing.  Anyway.  The topic of today's post is "Stupid shit that parents buy for their children".

I started thinking about this last night, when I was doing night fill.  Night fill is when a pallet of boxes, stacked higher than your head, is dumped in an aisle, and its your job to get them on the shelves.  If they don't go ON the shelves, you stick them on top. In stacks that, once again, go much higher than your head even if you're on the top of a 12ft ladder.  Yeah, I was doing night fill last night, in our Fisher Price/ Bruin aisle.

One of the items you typically find in the Bruin/Fisher Price aisle

It's all items made for kids from the ages of 6 months, to maybe about 3 or 4 years.  Playmats, rattles, activity walkers, that sort of thing.  It's not a bad aisle.  The boxes aren't too heavy, not too small that millions of things can fit in one box and you unleash hell when you open it.  The boxes are still quite big, and mostly square/rectangle.  They go on the shelf easily (yes, this is how toy store employees judge whether or not they like a toy).

Anyway, this aisle occasionally has some really stupid shit on sale.
Like a plane.

Technically, it's a Bruin Light and Sound Jet Ride On.  Who the fuck buys their kid a ride-on plane?  If your kids runs up to you saying "Mummy!  I want a plane for Christmas!"  You tell them to piss off and ask for something more realistic, like a job in a sweat shop.

I see no problem with my 3 year old being here

The plane is pretty cool though.  You can't see it in the picture, since it's in motion, but the rotor thingo at the front lights up and spins and makes noises and shit.  And it plays music and stuff.  Pretty cool.  I'd buy it, if it weren't made for people 50kg lighter than me.  And if I made more money.  And if it wasn't such a stupid thing to give a child.  I mean, if you give them a ride on jet one Christmas, what will they ask for next?  How do you top that? Give them omnipotency?

See, if I had a kid, and they wanted a plane for Christmas, I'd tell them that all their hopes and dreams are stupid, but I'll get them the next best thing.  A letter box.

 It talks!  And it sings, and it counts to ten.  At that point, I lost interest in what it did, because its a freaking letter box.  I really doubt that it can do anything cool.  Now really, toy manufacturers, a letter box?  What sort of messed up child do you think is going to WANT a letter box for Christmas?  Oh, that's right.  Toy manufacturers don't make toys for KIDS, they make it for the lazy-ass parents who can't be fucked finding what their kid wants.

I almost see where Fisher Price is coming from with the letter box.  Its bright, it has heaps of shit to pull on.  It sings, it counts, it has plenty of detatchable parts to choke on.  But I think the main part of its appeal is that fact that children go through a certain stage in psychological development (can't remember when, or what it's called.  What?  Don't ask me, I'm a psych student) where they find that putting stuff inside other stuff is really interesting.  They think that if they can't see it, its not there.  That's why they lose their shit in a game of peek-a-boo.  Just when they thought they got rid of you, you're fucking back again.  But I think that the letter box is aiming for that age group where boxes and closing doors and stuff are a novelty.  Who knows?  I may be wrong.  If I am, then it's just a letter box, being sold for the hell of it.


Now, another toy I don't get is Zhu Zhu Pets.  They're guinea pigs, which buttons on their noses, and wheels or some shit where their feet should be.

There's about a million varieties, even green ones.  I don't know why there's green ones.  But they sell for like $20 each.  An actual living guinea pig is about $10.  And if it were a real guinea pig, your child would not want more and more and more.  They would be content with the one they have.  Or, if you buy them a second one, they can be content with the millions of baby guinea pigs they will soon have.  But buying them a toy guinea pig is strange.  I think you're supposed to buy them a track and a play set so they can roll around the track or something.  I don't know, I've never seen it in action.  I have seen a note saying "do not place near head or hair" attached to a box.  I found that interesting.  I'd like to think that out there somewhere, a poor little kid had to cut a toy guinea pig out of their hair.

These Zhu Zhu Pets are a nightmare though. They have a fairly small designated area on the shelf, and you can fit millions on there because the boxes are so small.  But even with millions on the shelves, there's still millions more that need to go somewhere.  So they go on top of the shelves.  They spread lie a disease, even spilling across to overstocks in other aisles. It's ridiculous.  Also, they have now made a version for boys.  Kung Zhu Ninjas, and Special Forces Hamsters.  WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY


I'm running out of the will to type, so I'll talk about one more toy before I either move on to something else, or I give up entirely.

These are Sing-a-ma-jigs.
I don't really know what they're supposed to do, but I think they're supposed to be very popular this Christmas.  We have heaps of them in the warehouse.  I played with one.  They sound pretty weird.  I can't even explain them, but you can change the tone and pitch of their voices and god knows what else they do.  Their mouths consist of those really low quality hair bands I used to use when I was little.

I just looked on youtube for them.
This is what I found.

I think the creepiest part is that they have teeth.  Quite sharp, pain-causing teeth.  You can't see it, but behind the mouth are two little white plastic teeth that you don't notice until it closes around your finger.  And it hurts like a bitch.

Now, on to some less freaky topics to fill my word count, and update you on my daily life.

-Just as I stopped typing to give myself a bit of a break, I noticed that the palm leaf with the bird nest in it has fallen into the pool.  When you have a look, the spawn of satan baby bird  isn't in there.  Strange.  Mum thinks the dog ate it.  I don't think he would, but who knows?  It had to go somewhere.

-Last night after I got home from work, the BF came over to pick up his wallet, and to discuss a plan I had come up with while I was putting ride-on Jets on shelves all night.  I was thinking that in January, if we're still together, it will be our 1 year anniversary (holy shit that year went fast).  I suggested we plan to do something romantic awesome.  Like hire out a hotel room and chill out for a day or two.  By January, he should have a steady job and some money, and I'll be drowning in cash because of Christmas.    And it's not even that expensive, like I expected it to be, if you take into consideration how nice the place is.  We would have to have a balcony overlooking the Strand, obviously.  That view alone is worth the price.  Look at it!

I'll make sure I bring my white dress, so I can look in amazement in the opposite direction of the beach like this chick.

Nothing's set in stone, since I only came up with it last night.  But now I really want to do it.  I mean, even if we break up, I'll get a few friends to take his place, and we have a wild weekend in town.  Sounds good to me (the BF, on the other hand, suspects that I want to steal his kidneys).

Partly, I want to do it because it's an awesome idea, and I'll need a break after Christmas.  But the main reason is because I'm 18, and I want to use my 18-ness to do things I couldn't do before, like buy alcohol, and book hotel rooms without parental permission. I've been 18 for like 3 months now, and I still feel like I shouldn't be in 18+ places, doing 18+ things.  The novelty probably won't wear off for a while.

-Today is the second day of almost constant rain.  It's supposed to be Summer here, or at least approaching Summer, yet it's freezing cold because of the rain and overcast weather.  I'm actually considering putting on a jumper (sweater for you Americans)! The downside to rainy Summer weather in this part of Australia is the fact that we get cyclones.  It's really hot and humid (sticky and damp like a sauna), and the cyclone develops, and it destroys everything.  Fucking sucks man.  This Summer is supposed to be a really busy cyclone season, unfortunately for us humans.  Cyclones only come into contact with towns pretty rarely, but when they do, they fuck shit up.  A few years back, cyclone Larry hit a town near where I live, and all of Australia had a banana drought.  That sounds weird, but we had no bananas.  That's weirder than the term "banana drought".

Right.  I've made the minimum word count for today.  Now I just have to make up for yesterday's failure.  To do this, I shall talk about how screwed up the NaNoWriMo word count statistics are.  They're very discouraging.  Last year, when I attempted it (and failed about 2 days in, after 2000 words) they had a very basic statistics screen.  It said your goal, how many words you did today, and your total word count.  Now it's all about how many "successful" days you've had, how many days in a row, all that sort of stuff.  Even if you do a massive word count one day, then a slightly smaller than average one the next day, you're still ahead, but the website counts that as unsuccessful.   It was doing it to me yesterday.  I did about 3000 words one day, then 1240 the next, and even though I was below my daily goal, I was still good for the total goal, yet I was "unsuccessful", apparently.   It really sucks for the people who have school and stuff, who do the 10,000k weekends.  Because the website says they have 5 day "unsuccessful streaks".  That's really very discouraging for people, especially if they're actually ahead of their goal.


I just had a look at yesterday’s word count, and realised I have to do another 700 words or so to make up for yesterday, if I want to hit my total goal of 9000 words by today.  How about I do some study, and I'll type a small-ish blog later this afternoon/tonight. 

My total so far is 8415.

2nd of November, part 1: Halloween

This is supposed to be my 2^nd of November post.  However, since I got November 1^st done so quickly, I went straight on to the next day.  Technically, this was written yesterday.  I left it for a few hours, so I cut it a bit short, and just saved it in a word document to post it later. I didn’t reach the goal, so I’ll have 2 posts for the 2^nd of November.
As most people know, it was Halloween recently.  As an employee at a (US owned) toy store, it wasn’t a very fun time for me.  Mostly because of the costumes.

That Baroness one in particular.  Now that I look at it, what the hell happened to that chick’s feet?   And her mouth, too.  I think in this case, its one of those “bad photo quality makes things a lot scarier” problems.  We have a lot of those at my work.

Back to costumes, we had an entire wall covered in Halloween stuff, including costumes.  Generally, they were $50 to $80, which is reasonable for Australian prices.  There were a lot of witches, devils, angels, ninjas (which were freakin’ cool), princesses, Grease characters, and a weird white hooded cloak thing.  So there were heaps.  And as expected, the popular ones, that every customer wanted to buy, didn’t scan.  When you work on the registers, you can’t leave the registers.  And the non-scanning Halloween costumes were about 3 metres away from where we stand.  But we couldn’t just walk over.  We had to call someone from floor staff to check it for us.  And when they did check it, guess what?  It has no price tag, because it doesn’t scan.

I wanted to strangle someone.

On the Saturday (30^th Nov), we were doing Halloween activities.  All these kids showed up dressed in costumes, and most of them were variations of Batman.  One girl had like this black and red gothic angel/demon thing with huge wings.  She was about 5 years old.  Why was I not an awesome gothic angel/demon thing when I was 5?  She won our best dressed competition for the girls, and one of the Batmen (Batmans? What’s the plural of Batman?) won the boys’ competition.

 I wasn’t involved since I wasn’t cool enough, but I got to wear a witches hat.  It certainly made the shift more interesting, until someone liked it so much that they bought it straight off my head.  So I was hatless for the last part of my shift. 

After I finished, I had like a million missed calls from various people trying to make plans for that night.  My original plan was to go watch the Zombie Walk on the Strand (the beach) with Dani-Q and the boyfriend, then find a party to crash.  Then the Cleaning Nazi chucks a spanner in the works by announcing that we were going to the casino for dinner.  Now my meticulously thought out plan is destroyed, and I reschedule with everyone, since I’ll miss the Zombie Walk if I go to dinner.  I go home, have 15 minutes to get ready, leave the house looking like crap, go to the casino, and wait in queue for a good 20 minutes to get served.  We have dinner, I try the pokies for the second time in my life (I googled pokies to put a picture in here, and all I got was pictures of nipples) and I won $15.  Not as good as the $68 I won last time.

We leave, and rush off to the bf’s house, pick him up, rush off to the other side of town for this party, and get a message saying “don’t come, they’re kicking everyone out”.  We go anyway.  There’s heaps of people out the front, mostly slutty little 15 year olds, puking and going to the toilet in the gutter.  Classy. 

We knew that the party was hosted by 2 guys I knew, and some other guy that we didn’t know.  The one letting people in happened to be the one that we didn’t know, and the bf was (accidentally) quite rude to him.  My friends came up, and handled the situation, and we were let in.

There were more 15 year old skanks inside.  Apparently they were glaring at me, god knows why.  I’d like to think that it’s their normal faces.  More skanks turn up.  It’s the usuall Halloween costumes, black lacy bra, tiny shorts and a pair of ears and a tail that makes them some sort of animal apparently.  They were all wearing massive heels that they couldn’t walk in.  It was quite funny to watch.  They were all there for some guy, who hadn’t arrived yet.


He turned up a bit later, with a smoke machine, and some crazy lights thing.  It was pretty cool, until smoke alarms started going off.  It got really, really hot, so we went outside.  Suddenly, a bunch of 15 year olds run out to a car, open the boot and pull out a black case.  Back inside, they open it up, and it’s a disassembled stripper pole.  They spent most of the time trying to set it up.  They had a bit of a dilemma when they realised it had to be screwed into the roof.  We were the only ones sober enough to do it, and we sure as hell weren’t going to give up the entertainment of watching them try.  Everytime they thought they had it done (but still not attached to the roof), someone would put the motor bike helmet on and jump onto the pole.  It collapsed every time, and broke about 3 tiles by the time we left.


We were going to wait for them to finish, then watch them faceplant on the ground, but they took so long that it lost its entertainment value.  We went to McDonalds, and chilled there for a while.  2 people went home, and my friend dropped the bf and I in town (we call the local nightclub strip “town”).  It was full of zombies from the Zombie Walk that we didn’t get to go to.  It was also full of slutty playboy bunny costumes, slutty Alice in Wonderland, slutty soldiers (camo bra, camo undies, facepaint and thigh high boots), and a variety of angels, devils, and princesses.  Most of the guys were zombies, vampires, or mafia people.  We didn’t feel like spending money, so we took a look around at the free entry clubs, and saw plenty of people we knew, but no one we knew well enough to hang around with.  We called our ride home, and sat outside the hotdog stand to be picked up. I just realised I wrote that sentence, and it seemed like it was a set-up for something to happen.  Nothing happened outside the hotdog stand.  We talked to some of the bf’s friends, but that was it.   We went home, end of story.


So that was my Halloween.  Or rather, it was the night BEFORE Halloween.  On the actual night, no one came to harass us and steal our sugary deliciousness.  Finally, people are recognising that Halloween has nothing to do with Australia, and so they don’t celebrate it.  Even though I’m pretty sure it’s not American, the celebration aspect of it is.  So keep it in America. 


It’s quite funny how involved Americans seem to get with Halloween.  Not sure if it’s just a media sensationalising of it, or whether people really are that hardcore about it.  It’s strange though.  In Australia, we don’t really go all out for our holidays.  We do all the Christmas and Easter stuff, but not much else.  Except for Australia Day.  Oh god, Australia Day.  Everyone sits around and gets pissed at a barbeque.  It’s awesome.  But we don’t do fancy costumes, or carve faces into innocent vegetables, we just get drunk and eat lamingtons.



  Fuck I love lamingtons. 










What was I saying?
I don’t remember where that was heading, so I’ll start on something completely different.  You know how I went to the psychic the other day, and they totally mind fucked me?  I told Dani-Q on the way home, that I was going to go home and play the Sims so I felt like I had some sort of control in my life.  Lucky for me, uni’s pretty much finished, because I am ADDICTED to Sims 3 again.  Honestly, I’m typing this as fast as I can so I can start playing again.  Hmm, maybe I should finish here, and come back to the rest of this blog later.  I might get some inspiration from my little virtual people.

Ok.  It’s about 12 hours later.  I wasn’t playing the Sims the WHOLE time.   Honest…  Since it’s so late at night, I can’t be bothered sitting here writing this when I have all day tomorrow to do more.  This can be part 1, added in the morning.  And I’ll add part 2 later, after I’m done with it.  This post is 1510 words, bringing my total to 3610.

The Cleaning Nazi Strikes Again.

Well, that title is a little misleading, because it's not really about cleaning.  But it is the Cleaning Nazi who is once again harassing me, this time about DVDs.

As a job, the Cleaning Nazi interprets for Deaf people.  Yes, she can sign.  No, I can't sign, but I can understand enough to get the message.  Anyway.  She's always bringing home stuff to do, or in this case, DVDs to burn.  She and Dad say that she's fantastic with computers and I only wish I was as good as her etc etc etc.  Yeah, maybe in the mid-90s.  Not now.

Anyway, she demanded a week or so ago that I burn a DVD for her.  I tell her I'm busy, which I was.  She keeps demanding throughout the week, and I keep telling her I'm busy, which I was.  Last night I was out and she kept calling and calling me to ask if I burnt the DVD yet.  I said no, but I would do it when I got home.  She asked what program I use, and I told her what it was, but we don't have it on my laptop.

I go home, go to bed.  This morning, she bursts into my room screaming about the DVD.  She said she's ripped it off the original disc and saved it on my laptop, but she can't put it on the blank disc.  I do it for her, on three different discs like she asks.  She bursts in again, screaming that I didn't do it.  She says it has no sound, which is true.  The audio folder on the files taken from the disc are empty, in both the one she did, and the one I did this morning.  I thought this was normal, because Deaf people don't need sound on their educational, dialogue-free movies.  Apparently they do.  And now I'm the worst person ever, because the sound doesn't work.  Even Dad agrees that its all my fault.  It's even my fault that when mum did it without me, there was no sound.  I was clearly controlling the laptop through telepathic means, preventing the sound from being copied off a disc.  Anyway.  I got screamed at, and she went to work to complain about me.

She calls Dad (who is not at work for some reason, dunno why) and I, saying we need to set up the other computer to try and burn the DVD again.  There's 3 main problems with that.
1.  The computer she wants us to set up doesn't work.  That's why its in a cupboard.
2.  She took the disc with her, so we have no way of burning it.
3.  If the sound didn't work the first 2 times, done by 2 different people, I don't think its going to work at all.


So now we have another computer set up, and it doesn't work.  Guess who's going to cop the blame when the Cleaning Nazi gets home?