This may cause salty water to run from eyes.
Snoskred Opinions
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A challenge & housekeeping
You probably all know about NaBloPoMo – I got in too late and by the time I found out about it I’d already missed a day. However, I’ve decided to set myself a personal challenge of visiting every blog on the NaBloPoMo list, and leaving a comment, if I can. Want to join in the challenge? Say AYE in the comments.. I’ve already found a few great new blogs to read.
I’ve done a bit of moving stuff around on the sidebar today – the about me stuff has been moved to the top for a little while so you can read all about me if you like. Or ignore it, if not. ;) I’ve also added a bunch of new blogs I am reading. I don’t know if anyone uses the sidebar or finds it useful or looks at it, let me know if you think there’s too much there.
In other news
– A man in Adelaide said to his relatives that he thought he may have been bitten by a snake while gardening, and that he would go to the doctor “tomorrow” – he did not live to see tomorrow. Yet more evidence that some men would rather die than see a doctor.
– Britney Spears has dumped Kevin Federline. YAY! Good on you Brit. And ladies, let us not judge too harshly, we all have at least one K-fed in our past – as in a man who used you for money but you put up with it as long as he satisfied your needs.
– A young driver who was the only survivor in a nasty car crash has now been charged. Nothing the police can do to him will stop him from blaming himself for the rest of his life. Kids should not be allowed to load up a car with their mates and go driving. They need to focus on what they are doing. I feel sorry for this kid, his family and the families of the kids who were killed.
Not sex, death actually..
I blogged about politics, then religion, now death! At this rate anyone regularly reading this blog will surely never return.. :)
Well Death is a fact of life apparently. So we’re told. A while ago I asked people what song they wanted played at their funeral and nobody replied :( it was back in the early days of the blog, so probably nobody was reading. In fact probably nobody’s reading now.. so I’ll get no replies again.
If Morten Harket can’t attend and sing a song personally and Lukas Rossi is unable to arrive and sing something then I probably would pick a song by them on CD, played at the right moment.
We’re probably not supposed to talk about death because it is morbid and we’re all busy pretending it won’t happen to us but it probably will so unless you want your relos choosing songs you never liked and celebrating your life in vaguely inappropriate ways, you might want to make some kind of plan for the festivities you won’t be attending yourself, well you sort of will.. see how difficult this is to speak about? I’m like majorly uncomfortable typing this because I don’t want to offend anyone who recently lost someone they love.
Should I somehow merit a shrine by the side of the road I’d request a huge, fuck OFF sparkly pink glitter cross. Well I don’t really want a cross, but it seems to be what everyone else has. But why do I have to be a sheep? Can I instead request someone take one of the plane models on top of my bookshelves and cover it in sparkly pink glitter instead? If not, a triangle, I think. That shape seems to speak to me. Both the above would be fine, too.
As far as flowers go, I demand flowers thank you No In Lieu of Flowers here. I have always been partial to apricot colored roses. But not an insipid pale apricot rose, *real* apricot. Don’t confuse apricot with cream. *please* ;)
But as far as what to do with the remains, that is one I have been faffing on for years.. I don’t really like the whole cremation idea but the burial thing is also far too creepy. But then, I found this – the chance to be turned into something sparkly is far too good to be true though it does involve cremation. As my other half firmly refuses to put my remains into an urn on the mantelpiece (He says we don’t have a mantelpiece. This may be true, but sheesh, create one, it’s not hard! ;) It’s like my last request, be a bit reasonable!) so I can watch him playing the xbox while reclining on the couch for all eternity, I would like to be made into bling instead.
So what are your intentions for the celebration of your time here on Earth? And what do you think happens in the afterlife? Me, I don’t know. I like to think we all come back again in another form. But wherever I am going, I hope I can still listen to A-ha songs.. will I have ears? I’ve had a lot of trouble with the ears I have now, could I get some that work properly next time?
Hang on a minute..
You’re so going to hate me – first politics, now religion. What’s next, sex? ;) A good friend of mine from Melbourne told me about something that happened to him a few days ago –
I had no lunch all day so I went to KFC and I wanted a chicken and bacon burger. I was told “no we do not serve bacon here”. I rang KFC Head office to complain about it and spoke to the local area manager. It turns out that this store caters for the local Muslim community only. When I spoke to this manager during the conversation he actually called me a racist pig.
Ok. At what point do we give up *our* culture for someone else’s? I fear I may perhaps be turning into Pauline Hanson instead of just getting fake checks with her name on them, but am I wrong to say KFC has been serving bacon on their burgers for a heck of a long time and religion should not be a reason to change that? What’s next, Burger King and Mcdonalds? What about Hog’s Breath? Will they have to change their logo and not serve pork anymore?
Am I religionist to say I really don’t like this? I can’t be racist, because Muslim is not a race of people, it’s a religion which covers many races. But first the veil which I personally feel is insulting to women and clearly I am not the only one who feels that (you may not agree, and that’s fine) – I think women should be allowed to wear whatever they want but I do not believe they should be doing it because men cannot control themselves – That’s down to the men. While I don’t like to see crack or bellies or other body parts while walking down the street, that’s up to the women who wear those clothes to decide that they feel comfortable going out like that. But some people say this dress code is not anywhere in the Quran at all and it actually has to do with other things entirely.
While many Muslims call “Hijab”, an Islamic dress code, they completely ignore the fact that, Hijab as a dress code has nothing to do with Islam and nothing to do with QURAN.
God, the Most Merciful, gave us three basic rules for the Dress Code for Women in Islam (Submission):
The BEST garment is the garment of righteousness.
Whenever you dress , cover your bosoms.
Lengthen your garment.
Then the Mufti (a man I had never heard of at all before) goes about saying women who don’t wear the Hajib are uncovered meat –
“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat,” he said.
“The uncovered meat is the problem.
“If she was in her room, in her home, in her hajib, no problem would have occurred.”
The problem apparently was a woman who was raped. Err, that’s not a problem, that’s a *crime*. Women do not ask to be raped, regardless of what they wear. In fact no victim of a crime ever asks for it. If you forget to lock the door of your house when you go out, and people come in and steal everything you own, you are still the victim of a crime because those people *stole* your things. Had no criminals turned up to try the door, your stuff would all still be there. Am I wrong, people?
Not only that, he seems to be saying that women should stay at home, possibly in their room. Well if women are at home in their room, what need do they have for covering up? They should be able to sit there naked if they want to, it’s their room, FFS! You want to tell women what to do and what they should be wearing while they do it every minute of the day? I’d hate to be this man’s wife.
I hate to say it, but when you can’t get bacon on your burger in *Australia* – the land of put anything you like on your burger and call it good – beetroot, egg, bacon, avocado, etc – something is VERY wrong here. And when someone who calls to complain about it is called a racist pig (when this has nothing to do with race at all, it’s about religion) something is VERY wrong here.
At this stage, I agree with Pauline on one thing.. I don’t like it. What do you think?
Politics and truth..
Yeah I know, I said I wouldn’t do it. But this one isn’t so much about politics as a fact of life.
Kim Beazely is currently a shrinking man. According to a news article, he has lost 16kgs since the start of 2006. A lot of people seem to think losing weight will win him the next election. I have some bad news for those people..
Every week at the high school I went to, they had a speaker turn up and address the entire year. That was a fair bunch of people, as I’ve mentioned before, I went to a school with over 500 people in my year level alone. So these were held in the library with people squeezing into every space imaginable.
One day in year 10, a speaker from Flinders University gave a lecture entitled “Why fat people are dirty people”. By that time, I was not really that fat anymore. I had been a size 16 when I started that school in year 8, and those uniforms were literally swimming on me by now, I couldn’t wear them anymore..
I’d got down to a size 12 and realistically I was no bigger than anyone else there in the room, but I was still one of the “fat kids” and when I saw eyes begin to turn in my direction as this cruel man went on and on about fat people being dirty, I knew it would not matter if I was just skin and bones, those kids would always see me as one of the fat kids.
I mean, let us not even get into the fact that the school allowed this lecture to take place, because they should not have. That anyone should have been allowed to stand up there and say that to any group of kids is just wrong. It’s bad enough for a kid with a bit of extra weight in school. The teasing, the bullying, the nastiness, none of it is nice but it *is*. It exists. You can’t stop it. At least, not without automatic weapons, or bamboo canes applied to any kid saying something nasty, and that’s kind of taking it too far the other way.
But after this lecture it got plenty worse, especially for the largest kid in the year, a boy named Andrew who despite his outer shell was an incredible artist. He did some amazing work but nobody ever saw that, and the treatment he got caused him to become an extremely angry individual. Any teasing directed his way would generally be met by swearing and then later, punching.
He spent a lot of time in detention, with me and the deputy principal who died. I wish I could have called him my friend, but he was so busy building walls to stop people from getting close enough to him that they could hurt him, there was no chance of breaking through. And I understood that, because I’d had to do that myself at times.
Fat kids know that the outer shell really isn’t that important, because we know on the inside there’s plenty we have to offer. But in an environment where everyone sees only the outer shell, and makes judgements based only on that, you are never given that opportunity.
So when I left that school at the end of year 11, I was down to a size 10. I didn’t really like myself at that size at all. I’ll be honest with you. When I looked in the mirror all I saw was these enormous cheekbones that models would probably have killed for, but I did not like them. I thought I looked like a skeleton, and quite ill.
But moving to a new school, things changed entirely for me. I was accepted into the “in crowd”, got the lead in the year 12 play, and I was driving by this time so I didn’t have my own car but I had pretty much the use of my parents car, and it was an adult campus so it had a much more mature attitude towards things. I did subjects I really enjoyed instead of what the school forced you into (photography, media studies, catering and cooking, drama, stuff like that) and it was a great year.
None of those kids ever knew that at my old school I was considered one of the fat kids. But when the outer shell looked acceptable to them, I had a much better chance of them seeing what was on the inside, and that had not changed at all – I was still me. I was that same me at the previous school. It’s just nobody gave me a chance there.
I hate to say it, but it’s the truth – Kim Beazely is going to find the Australian public just the same. He can lose all the weight he wants. He can be stick thin, but it will do him no good, and it will not win him any elections. He will *always* be the fat kid, except to those of us who were fat when we went to school, who can see the inner shell. And statistically there’s probably not that many of us out there – there will be more and more as the years go on, but most schools only had a few back when I went to school.
So this does not bode too well for the ALP, because I don’t believe the Australian public will ever elect Kim Beazely, regardless of what weight he is. The damage is already done. I sincerely believe that supporters of the ALP have to realise they are never going to be elected with Kim Beazely at the helm. *and* I know it’s not fair, you know it’s not fair, but it *IS* – and that’s the bottom line. But..
Who do they have, who is stick thin? Who also knows plenty about the environment, a major concern for increasingly more Australians? Who may be bald, but the public don’t hold that against you like they hold once being overweight against you.
Just for God’s sake, don’t let him dance..
A serious announcement
For those of you reading this blog who are not already aware, I have made a decision some time ago not to breed – I’m not having kids. Why, you ask?
- I was in the room when my second nephew was born and what I saw happen was extremely scary.
- My arm still has the bruise from where my sister dug her fingers in during transition.
- My sister has been breeding quite well – 3 kids already and she’s not yet 30.
- Perhaps I can convince her to have another one then she can give two to me?
- The Other Half and I hate being places where kids are allowed to run amok.
- The Other Half and I would rather work weekends because that means weekdays are generally kid free wherever we choose to go.
- I cannot STAND anything icky, gooey or not 100% clean.
- This means I would turn any offspring into a germophobe.
- I have two cats, these are my babies.
- So much so that I printed out nice wallet size pictures of them, had them laminated and gave them to my Mum so she can show strangers her grand kids.
- My sister once let me babysit. She said she would be back in two hours.
- For two hours I was scared. At two hours and one minute, I was terrified. At three hours and still no sign of her I was ready to pack my belongings and run far, far away. At four hours, I was desperately calling her mobile. Help! HELP NOW!
- The only reason I survived those four hours was because the other half did most of the baby sitting.
- Babies become eerily calm in his presence.
- If I bred, I would have to give my baby to him and go to work while he raised it to four years, at which stage I would be happy to take over as you can have a rational conversation with a four year old. Sometimes.
- I’m honest enough with myself to say I am just too darned selfish to be a mother. I don’t have that mothering bone at all. But, I do love my cats. And my nephews and new niece, as long as I can give them back after a few hours.
I made this decision some years ago (my second nephew is now 5) and I am still feeling ok with it. I don’t think I am going to freak out as my biological clock ticks closer to stopping entirely. But, ask me in 9 years when I will be almost 40, and I’ll let you know if that is still the case. ;)
Just did my daily blog rounds..
I read probably 20-30 blogs a day. This can take up significant time, except when nobody has said anything and then you just close the tabs. Not pointing fingers anywhere in particular of course, but FFS! Say something, say anything as long as it’s something!
Today I have a lot of thoughts which I really don’t want to share with you. I’ve shared them with my other half. We’ve bounced off the walls for a bit and then eventually made a decision. I wanted to share them with Sephiroth but he’s nowhere to be seen, probably asleep. That’s ok but when you get online please skype me.
It’s been a rough 24 hours. Things have been very unhappy at work this last couple of weeks, and quite frankly it’s been making me ill. You’d know from some of my blogs that there have been issues. You know I’ve had evil tonsilitis. You don’t know there’s been a lot of stress and migraines and various other unpleasantnesses.
You don’t know that today, I went to work all fired up and ready to be a part of things only to be kicked in the teeth, yet again, for the 50 millionth time. I don’t need that in my life. Nobody does. And my parents do not need the stress this situation has placed on all of us. The other half can handle it. He somehow doesn’t get cut to the bone by the nastiness. I do, and it hurts.
I know the solution to the problem is to remove the poisoned apple from the barrel. As yet, my Dad does not seem to think he can do this. So the current solution is to remove myself from the situation until the apple is extracted.
The thing I will share with you – I am now staying home and baiting. No more work for me at this stage. If the situation at work changes, maybe this will be reconsidered.
You may not have heard this vicious rumor, but if you have the following text is especially for you. In other news,
apparently I am the genesis of all evil in the scambaiting world.
I’d be ok with that, if I actually was. You see there are people who think I spend all my time plotting against them, that I talk other people into being my spokesperson, and that I am “generally spreading disaffection” wherever I can.
Let us make this clear, once and for all.
I am not holding any grudges against anyone. THIS MEANS YOU TOO!
What do I spend all my time doing? Hmm.. baiting scammers, taking their calls, helping other baiters with their baiting projects, mentoring, blogging, reading blogs, listening to music, visiting nice beaches (see below blog), watching movies (not often enough!), cooking, cleaning, ironing, and various other chores plus a million other things. Don’t forget, playing pool. ;) Oh, and being mesmerized by the glitter lamp. That probably takes up 50% of my time ;) hehe
The people who think I would rather waste my time plotting against them instead of doing any of the above are seriously disturbed individuals. If you have ANY proof that I have been doing this, let’s see it. And not the “Oh this person said” or “That person said” shit you’ve pulled before. Actual written quotes.
I know there are none. I know you can’t do this. I know WHAT YOU SHOULD DO IS GET BACK TO BAITING. Stop this monthly drama crap, quit the bullshit, BUILD A BRIDGE AND WALK OVER IT NOW.
Because *I* did it LONG AGO. As did other people you are holding grudges against. You say we have an agenda? Perhaps you are the ones who do. You want to know what’s on my agenda? Baiting scammers. Is that on yours? If not, WHY NOT?
All I want to do is bait, and get on with my life. I don’t care about any of those people who think they are so important that I am sitting here thinking of ways to hurt them or get back at them. I just want to hurt the scammers, not people I once thought of as friends.
Of course I’m sad that they weren’t really my friends – or were my friends as long as they thought they could control me. Of course I have regrets about how things turned out. I’m NOT perfect and I never claimed to be. I can be a pain in the ass. You know what though? Nobody else was doing the things that needed to be done. So I had a couple of choices – delegate and hope people helped, or just do it all myself knowing it would get done. For the most part I chose the latter.
I work hard, and I get a lot done. This threatens people who would rather sit around and talk shit. That’s fine.
Just leave me the hell alone, and I’ll do the same for you.
Now Robin, back to the batcave. Let’s bait some freaking lads people!
Tomorrow is Friday
Fridays are great. Why, you ask? Let me take a minute to expand on one of the other staff members I currently have to tolerate on a regular basis. Negative Nelly. No, that’s not her real name, but it might as well be.
Have you ever met someone that can take anything you say and turn it into a negative? Have you ever met someone who never, ever, EVER says a single positive thing? Do you know someone whose body language, facial expressions and even tone of voice manage to scream negative even if they are trying to be nice to a customer? She works in my store too.
To give you an example – you might try to make conversation with her, and you might say “Looks like it’s a beautiful day outside”. Her reaction could be any of the following.
a. Yes but I’m stuck in here, aren’t I?
b. I won’t get to enjoy it.
c. The minute I finish work today it will start raining.
d. All the customers will go to the beach. I might as well go home, no sales today.
Now I come from an industry where you *have* to be positive all the time, or you’ll plain go nuts. Try working in a call centre with an attitude like that, you’ll last less than 5 minutes. You need to find positives to motivate yourself, and you need positive people around you. So it’s all I can do to stop myself from strangling this woman when she talks like that. I can’t even say anything to her – I’ve learned that at work I can’t speak my mind otherwise the shit hits the fan. What would I want to say? The following as well as a few other things.
a. What you put out there comes back to you – if you are negative, your customers will be too.
b. If someone asks you how you are, you say “Excellent!” – it will surprise them in a good way, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this to be a fact.
c. If you can’t stop being negative, f*ck off because you’re just annoying.
d. When you are negative like that, it affects everyone in the store and not in a good way.
That, among other things. I’ve actually had two days off because I have been sick – my neck swelled up and I was kinda freaking out wondering what was going on. I went to see the Cute Doctor (a story for another time) and in his rather cute accent he told me I have acute tonsilitis which is very contagious. I decided not to be nasty and go to work and cough all over the people I don’t like. However it seems many of them have already caught it from the admin people, who had this last week. :( Back to work tomorrow and thankfully I look almost human again.
Riddle me this, Batman.
Do people on speed have clear sinuses? DO THEY? I want to KNOW because if they do maybe I should start taking it.
This post may contain some swearing. I’m in a bit of a bad mood. Had a bad day at work (haha that’s almost funny, like there is ever a good one when the staff ignore the customers because their conversations about SHYTE are much more important) in fact it was so bad that at 1pm I decided to grab the car keys and get out of the building for a little bit. I had to go to the chemist to get some drugs – it’s hayfever season. By the time I get to the chemist, I’m feeling a little happier. That’s not going to last long. :(
Only one thing works for my sinuses, and that is pseudoephedrine – hereafter referred to as PE because that is a bloody long word. I have tried every other option. Believe me, I have. Now due to some fuckwits making speed out of PE or some such crap – they brought in new laws this year where you have to show your license and they keep records of you buying anything with PE in it. Plus, they only give you a *tiny* supply – enough for three days. So you have to keep going back to get more.
I bought some from this same chemist a couple of weeks ago. I don’t usually go to that chemist but it was closer so I did go back there this time. Feeling like some kind of criminal simply because I WANT TO BE ABLE TO FUCKING BREATHE FOR CHRISTS SAKE! I go in to get the drugs, hand over the license, wait for her to check with the pharmacist. The pharmacist comes over to me and says “You bought some of these a couple of weeks ago according to our records, and colds and flu don’t normally last that long”.
I was simply STUNNED. Plus, I was already in a really bad mood, so the chances of this woman having her head bitten off were high. But no, I tried to remain polite, and I said, actually I am using them for hayfever. She said “Have you tried other things” and at this point, I am ready to wig out like the chick from Misery and scream OF COURSE I FUCKING WELL HAVE, DO YOU THINK I ENJOY HAVING TO FIND A CHEMIST EVERY THREE FREAKING DAYS TO BUY SOME MORE OF THESE DRUGS? But no, once again I remain polite, and say yes, actually I have tried all the other options including hayfever injections from my doctor, this is the only thing that works.
I will not ever go back to that chemist. I will go to the one I know isn’t going to ask me stupid shit like that. I should have remained loyal in the first place.
So by the time I got back to work, I was really not in the mood for an afternoon of staff standing around chatting. Of course they did, and of course as usual I couldn’t do anything about it. I’m so over this already. I’m seriously thinking about quitting completely.
Illicit diversion of pseudoephedrine in Australia has caused significant changes to the way pseudoephedrine products are regulated. As of 2006, all products containing pseudoephedrine have been rescheduled as “Pharmacist Only Medicines” (Schedule 3). As a result, a pharmacist must be directly involved in every transaction involving the sale of pseudoephedrine to members of the public, and such medicines will be kept behind the counter, away from public access. Such measures are designed to ensure that the medicines are needed for a legitimate purpose. Pharmacists are also required to seek identification from potential purchasers, and maintain a record of each transaction. Certain preparations containing significantly high amounts of pseudoephedrine are further restricted as “Prescription Only Medicines” (Schedule 4).
Quick Question
It’s been a long day..
All these recent funerals have got me thinking. What music would you want played at your funeral?
I am thinking something by Metallica, mainly because I love their music.
However this song by A-ha is the one I would pick..