A Cranky Aussie

It's a new year

2012-01-01T18:15:00.001-08:00

It's 2012, some say the last year of life on earth, some say the best year yet, some say the year we will finally find another home, that other home being a planet somewhere out there that can support human life but doesn't yet have any or if it does it will be so primitive we can just show them who's boss and take over, pretty much like we did with Australia and a shit load of other places.

Anyway, I move away from my reason for this rant.

I watched a guy today, maybe he was a father I don't know, he was with a woman and three small kids, 2 boys and a girl, maybe 3, 4 and 6. The boy would have been the middle one, about 4 I would guess. Crowded shopping center, trolleys, people not watching where they are going, all the usual crap in shopping centers.

So, here is this family and they are heading for some store, one kid, the oldest, in tow holding mums one hand while she uses the other to push a trolley filled with stuff including a small 3 year old girl. Now, all this is standard, the woman doing the work, the guy looking at all the younger women, and girls.

I am walking in the opposite direction and I see, way ahead, what is about to happen.

I stop and watch as this guy is so busy looking at girls he has no control over the 4 year old boy who is now running flat out towards an oncoming trolley filled with groceries and being pushed by a woman with 2 of her own children.

The trolley pusher also see's what is ahead and stops the trolley, she stands staring in disbelief at this young boy running straight at her.

The boys mother is now horrified and yelling at the guy, most likely the father, trying to get his attention as he is closest to the boy and obviously should have been in control of him, but he wasn't in control of his own desires let alone a kid.

The 4 year old runs face first into the trolley, face first and drops to the floor.

The woman pushing the trolley screams 'oh my god', the mother of the boy screams 'oh my god', the guy suddenly looks and screams 'what the fuck!! why don't you fucking look where you are going you stupid fucking bitch'.

At this point I had seen enough and told the father of the boy, in no uncertain terms what I thought of him . I also pointed out that the woman who was now in tears and holding her own 2 children, had done nothing wrong, that she had in fact stopped and that his dumb ass son had run straight into her.

At this point the mother of the boy was picking up her son, crying and glaring at the father. The boy had a blood nose and headache but was otherwise all right thank god.

I'm sorry but I have to wonder if we are actually moving ahead in this world or going backwards. I see people my age and yeah I know, old fuckers should shut the hell up and go find a retirement home yadda yadda yadda, looking at the younger generations and shaking their heads while the younger generations make fun of them,I mean seriously.

The younger generations seem to be getting progressively worse in their attitudes, they call people Mother Fucker's without even thinking about what that implies or how they would feel if they were told some asshole (other than their father) had just had had sex with their mother.

They go out and buy hot cars, or they make one hot, then go around showing off by burning rubber until the tires are bare and stripped.

Then, these same idiots go out and steal new tires or wheels because they can't afford to buy them on government hand outs.

I watch young people, and I say people rather than being gender specific for a very good reason, I see both genders doing much of what I am about to name....

Spitting in the street, on the foot path, in full view of others. In some countries they would be arrested for doing this.

Chewing gum and sticking it under seats on buses, in trains, under tables at cafe's or just dropping it on the foot path, next to the spit.

Using language that would have seen me smacked in the head by my parents and probably beaten to a pulp and locked in my room by my grandfather, in public as if it was just normal English and appropriate, I mean what are we teaching our kids in school??

Shoplifting, as bold as you like because they know there is pretty much nothing anybody can do these days, not allowed to physically touch anybody, might get sued.

Keying cars, just because somebody has a better looking car than they do that seems to make it ok to run a key up the side of the other car, and both genders do this!

Dumping fast food containers and wrapping, disposable drink containers, cans and other rubbish out the car windows, the worst of which are cigarette butts.

Dumping rubbish on the floor in food courts or in shops and walking away, I mean how many of them do that at home, what would happen to them if they did?

Why the hell are we, the older generation, the generations who control parliament, who control schools, court rooms and businesses, why are we putting up with it?

What is wrong with people today, where have we, the older generation, gone wrong?

Well the answer is simple, we didn't go wrong, that's why we don't like what we see.

What went wrong was do gooders, lawyers, hippies who don't believe in smacking a child. What went wrong is discipline, at home, in school, on the streets.

Bring back the days when the police actually had some power to control things, when schools had truancy officers, when police could pick up kids in school hours who were not at school and take them there.

Bring back the days when I could grab my children by the ear and drag them back to school, when I could send them to their room to think about what they had done or said without being taken to court for emotional abuse.

Bring back discipline and respect for others and shoot the stupid fucks who can't even watch their 4 year old in a crowded shopping center.

Wankers

2011-12-03T18:09:00.000-08:00

A Mobile Earthquake Simulator.

LA. California where else would you find something so incredibly lame as a mobile earthquake simulator? But that's not the worst of it, now take an English TV Presenter and put him in this thing as part of 'Bang goes the theory' and what you have is a total wanker.

Seriously, how could you be 'a little worried' as you sit in a fake lounge room, with an Earthquake Expert no less, on the back of a truck that shakes a bit and moves around on hydraulic jacks?

I know people who have been in real earthquakes, hell I've been in one too and trust me, the difference between the back of a truck simulator and the real thing is a universe apart.

To present such an event in such a pathetic way as part of an educational program is tantamount to shoving my fingers down my throat, same result really.

I am so tired of wankers on TV shows who make out they are brave wonderful people when nothing they do is REAL.

To borrow a phrase from Bart Simpson, reality TV 'both sucks and blows', like you are going to act normally when you have a TV Camera pointed at you... seriously.

As I sit here writing this I have a tv on behind me and I can hear Andrew Ettinghausen, wanker extreme, talking about Shark Week, a man who would shit himself 50 times if he came face to face with a Great White in the wild with no camera crew or divers with electronic shark repellers to protect him.

We watch all these shows claiming to be Realty Shows and, if you believe the hype, millions of dumb ass people actually believe they are, despite a brain inside the skull that tries so hard to draw your attention to the simple fact that there are a dozen camera's pointed at everybody in the damded thing.

Here's an example, American Chopper Senior vs Junior, do you really believe that these two had a falling out that saw them in court? Seriously?

If that were true then explain to me why, in the ad, they say the lines in turn and Dad ends with the words 'and then drove us apart'. If these guys were REALLY in that situation do you think for an instant they would speak that way, in unison? If you do then what can I say, you're a .....

Hey, you disagree that's fine, the title of my blog says it all :)

Roadworks

2011-08-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

I pay $7.20 for the privilege of using a motorway built to ease congestion and get me to and from my destination points faster and more efficiently, use less fuel because it's a shorter route, that sort of thing.

Why then am I sitting here not 200m from the Toll Collection Point STATIONARY!?!

Now, I know the reason is a little more complicated than the 'Roadworks Ahead' sign I am now staring at, I know it is a little more complicated than some idiot trying to get from one section of the 'roadworks' to another, through moving traffic wearing a reflective vest and all the safety gear (minus a helmet I have to say) but seriously, this is a 110kph speed zone on a Motorway which I have just PAID to use and here I am sitting staring at brake lights and dumb ass workers who can't even figure out how to wind a red and white striped tape around a stupid pole, there are 3 of them trying to work it out.. SERIOUSLY!

There is obviously a traffic jam but this one is on a 4 lane motorway with only 1 lane blocked by actual roadworks, the other lanes are, it would seem, un-hindered - so my question is WHY?

Well the answer to that is STUPIDITY.

The people in charge of the roadworks have allocated tasks to individuals, some of these individuals are most certainly educated and obviously have expertise in their chosen areas but when it comes to winding a tape around a pole, a pole with a clearly defined area around which the tape obviously goes, they have a problem so, they call another worker, equally qualified, to assist. This worker has to cross 2 lanes of traffic to reach the offending pole and when he finally arrives, having first caused 2 minor accidents, he is stumped as well.

Now, the 2 minor accidents just happen to be in 2 of the 3 free lanes which suddenly reduce traffic flow on a previously freely running 4 lane motorway to a single lane, AT PEAK HOUR!

What happens next is just a comedy of errors, drivers, keen to get home and already frustrated by the roadworks are forced to do something most drivers seemed blissfully unaware of until this very moment, they are forced to merge, but not just one lane into another, now they are forced to merge 4 lanes into 1 'at roadworks' AND around 2 accident scenes where people are throwing arms about, shouting at each other, screaming at roadworkers (who obviously don't give a crap) and stepping backwards into traffic.

The police would be useful at this time however there is a small problem with this, they can't get here because the traffic is now backed up some 10k and creating havoc way back in the city.

A single road worker who could not figure out how to wind a tape around a pole has now brought peak hour traffic in Sydney Australia to a stop.

And I paid $7.20 for the privilege of being a part of it.

Innocence lost

2011-04-25T03:11:00.000-07:00

When I was a youngster growing up I believed in bluebells, swallows, butterflies, love, compassion, justice, family, friendship and life. I believed in all these things because I was innocent, I didn't know yet how the world worked or how people change, how life changes things.

One day in Vietnam I looked across a small clearing into the eyes of a 15 year old girl and my life changed, my innocence left me and my world became a place of horror and deception.

I was with a group of soldiers at a small village, most of them had gone to mingle with the villagers in the clearing, giving gifts, holding small children and generally making new friends.

As we stood watching this scene I saw a girl, 15 at most, come into sight at the opposite edge of the clearing, she walked slowly towards the crowd in the middle. She was dressed in a long loose dress that hung almost clumsily around her, it looked far to big on her small frame.

As she moved forward she spotted me and her eyes locked onto mine, even at a distance I could clearly see the fear on her young face but in her eyes I saw pleading mixed with fear, I saw hope, wisdom and commitment.

She moved her right hand in such a way that the front of her dress flicked apart just enough for me to see something under it, something that didn't belong there and I saw what she was doing with the other hand.

This girl, young, pretty and afraid, had the index finger of her left hand hooked through the pin of a North Vietnamese hand grenade which was in turn tied to a cord around her upper torso with what looked to be another dozen grenades, all of which would explode if she pulled that pin.

At that instant my life changed, from that moment on I would never be able to look at life through eyes of innocence, I was forever changed.

This girl knew that she had to be stopped, she looked directly into my eyes and cried, she did not slow, she did not stop but nor did she take her eyes from mine, she wanted me to see the grenades, she wanted me to know that she was about to kill everybody in that clearing and she wanted me to stop her.

She did not choose that end for her young life, she did not ask me or trick me into being there that day, she did not strap those grenades onto her body, she did not decide to commit mass murder, others did, others who were holding her family hostage.

What she did do with that look, that wisdom, that compassion and that pleading was to leave me no choice other than to shoot her, nobody else that day saw what she was doing, she did not show anybody else, she showed me, she pleaded with me to stop her and she knew there was only one way I could do that.

I was one day off 19 and that moment aged me forever.

I volunteered to go to Vietnam, I knew what I was walking in to and I knew it wouldn't be pretty but I also knew, and believe to this day, that we should not have been there in the first place.

If governments, dictators and politicians didn't start wars then innocents would not be made to fight, to die, to kill.

Those who send others to war, those who make us defend ourselves, those who turn us into killers and murderers have a price to pay, they not only destroy the enemy, they destroy us.

I cannot walk into a Vietnamese restaurant today without seeing that girl, I cannot watch a movie about war without seeing her face, I cannot close my eyes at night without seeing those eyes, that fear, that wisdom and that determination and I will meet my maker one day with the knowledge that I ended that young girl's life.

I hope he can forgive me, because I still can't.

I hate em I hate em I hate em I hate em... did I mention I hate em!!

2011-03-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

Those stupid dumb ass ads, you know the ones, some fancy actor looking guy who never had a hair out of place in his entire life and wouldn't know what a shaver was if it stuck itself to the end of his nose with a flashing sign saying 'shaver, shaver' who glides one of these wonderful magical 53 blade hair sensing self lubricating vibrating sensual throw away shavers across a lather laden face like it was going skiing or something.... I mean AARRGGHH!!!!

I was just on Facebook, yep, I am, and on the side of my page was this ad, some fancy actor looking guy who never had a hair out of place yadda yadda yadda, squirts a pile of some goo from a tube onto his fingers then wipes it down both cheeks on his face leaving behind nothing but a stupid smile and another pissed off watcher. No residue, no indication of any kind that he rubbed this magical concoction into his skin, just this stupid 'how cool am I' smirk and some bullshit across the bottom of the ad saying something about rehydration of leather, or maybe it meant his skin, I'm not quite sure.

Then there are those f**ing stupid BAM ads, squirt a bit of that wonderful stuff on a bit of old leaf you found on your doorstep and wipe it over your dried cooked food laden stove top and BAM, it's as shiny as that new bike your dad bought you when you were 5, and so are those taps it seems, the ones with 9 years of prison scum on them, until you wipe your old sock with a squirt of BAM over them that is!! seriously!!

When are we going to see some real ads that tell the truth, you know

'BAM and your money is gone, the scum isn't, the cooked on food isn't, but your money and common sense are'

'New CHUM for dogs, because your dog doesn't give a crap if his food has veggies in it and was prepared by starving refugees who replaced the actual food with their own crap, because you care what your dog eats even though he/she doesn't, but mostly because it cost us f**k all to make and you're gonna pay whatever we say because you're a dog lover aren't you sweetie'

'Don't bother with expensive perfumes and after shaves, just buy FAB with fragrance enhancers, strip off and wash that dress or shirt, sit around and wait for it to dry then put it back on, look all smug and head out on your date smelling like a laundromat, only you will know'

Don't get me wrong, there are some good ads out there.... no its true, I've seen them, but the vast majority assume that the viewer is a total moron who has no brain or education, will buy absolute crap just because some idiot actor looking guy/girl says it works and you will smell like shit if you don't have it, your dog will pack his/her paws and head next door if you don't feed it what they say and your stove top and taps... well, you don't want to know, really you don't!

'BAM, you're broke, your taps are still filthy, your stove top is growing its own greens, your dog is eating your babies dirty nappies (cos that's what dogs do), you smell and your date left town with the actor looking guy/girl yesterday you dick, but that's ok, we have your money'

Did I mention I hate em!

Decended from

2011-01-18T03:58:00.000-08:00

The word Decend has meaning, according to the oxford dictionary it means:

(v. i.) To come down to a lower, less fortunate, humbler, less virtuous, or worse, state or station; to lower or abase one's self; as, he descended from his high estate.
(v. i.) To pass from the more general or important to the particular or less important matters to be considered.

Now, I need you to think about that meaning and consider what brains and minds of people, scientists in fact with IQ's that register in the Richter Scale, or at the very least make most of ours look pathetic, have said about us, the human race, this 'Civilised Race' that has evolved here on this wonderful planet.

Now, these people, these brilliant minds chose to use, agreed to use, a word in our dictionary to describe how we reached this stage of evolution, we have ancestors it seems, we came from somewhere, we evolved, in fact we 'decended' from the apes and our closest relative, according to these Richter Scale IQ's, is the humble but cute Chimpazee.

Now you will forgive me for pointing out the obvious.......
How often do you see a Chimp, or a bunch of chimps, sneaking through the undergrowth with automatic weapons that shoot around corners? wiping out 1000's of square kilometers of forest, their very habitat, to build and use structures that harm the very planet they live on. How many times do see a chimp press a red button that launches a missile to obliterate and entire city, to vaporise 100's of 1000's of their own kind.

Yeah ok so they didn't 'evolve' the brain structures that allowed them to use the same opposable thumb to become industrial, to travel at speeds they were never designed to travel at, and kill their own kind, often their own families, in the process.

I have yet to see a chimp whip it's own children with a stick or an ironing cord, I have yet to see a chimp beat the living crap out of its wife or partner because it went down the pub to consume a beverge it created specifically to pickle its brain and kidneys.

This morning I met a fellow worker with her son, he had just come out of hospital after being attacked, for no reason other than pure lunacy, with a hammer. He spent a week in a coma and now has blood on the brain, he will be ok luckily but he might just as easily have died.

As I talked to him and his mother it became obvious that the attack had been random, this same group of 'juveniles' (all apparently under 17), had attacked 5 others before they found this unlucky lad walking home from a skate park.

Evolved? maybe.... Decended? absolbloodylutely!!

Idiots

2010-10-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Ok, I lost somebody very close to me years ago because a guy went and had a few drinks with the mates then drove, or more accurately tried to drive, home so I am likely to be somewhat biased here however......

Instead of driving down to the local for a few drinks with your mates try this. Put on a blindfold, have your family, friends and neighbors gather up and down the road outside your house, now get in your car and drive from one end of the road to the other, I mean, whats the frigging difference.

Every time you get behind the wheel of a car with alcohol in your blood you are putting lives in danger, maybe not yours, maybe not somebody you love and maybe not even somebody you know but sure as hell somebody and that my friend should be enough of a thought to stop any sane, responsible human being from doing it!

I just drove back from my daughters place with my grand kids in the car, every day event really for many people, nothing special about it, nice day for a drive anyway.

We are on a bend, long sweeping bend with 2 unbroken lines in the middle of the road, so we all know what that means right,

'no crossing the double unbroken lines because it's dangerous and you might hit something coming the other way'

unless of course you happen to be driving a Mercedes.

It's roughly 9.05am, a guy in a Merc, probably early 40's, one hand on the wheel and the other tipping into his mouth what was clearly an alcoholic mixed drink, one of those Jim Beam n Coke cans.

He overtook us in the middle of the bend across the double unbroken lines with oncoming traffic in sight, barely missing a car and wobbling as he came back on to the correct side of the road.

Did he slow down? No
Did he wave sorry guys? No
Did he continue to drink from his can? Yes
Did he care if any of the other cars became involved in an accident because of his stupidity? No

This guy didn't even look in his mirrors, he just drove off down the road well above the speed limit and my grandson at age 9 commented that he was being very naughty.

My grand daughter at the ripe old age of 4 said he was very silly.

I said a few things about him too - but in my head, what came out of my mouth was 'yes, he is'.

This particular bend by the way has seen its share of accidents, in fact only recently a similar thing took place, driver in a utility, been drinking, overtook at almost the same place and when he tried to get back on to his own side of the road he clipped another car sending it spinning.

There were three cars involved that night, one woman died on the scene, a man died later in hospital. You would think people would learn.

Why are we not learning, why must we humans be so damned stupid, ignorant and careless with the lives of others, mostly those we don't even know, but often those we do.

As I said at the start, I lost somebody very close to me through the actions of a man who thought he could drive while over the alcohol limit so I am biased but even so...... do you disagree?

Why on earth do we continue to tolerate drink drivers, illicit drug induced violence, assault and robbery, sexual predators, rapists, why are we still letting them walk the streets, drive on our roads, walk into 'safe rooms' and shove crap into their arms, get into cars or onto bikes while drunk, why do we tolerate this crap in the 21st century.

If your wife, daughter, son, girlfriend, sister, brother, best friend was killed today because of the actions of some arse who drove while drunk or high as a kite, how would you feel?

We drive past accident scenes, we slow down, we say 'oooh that's a bad one', we say a prayer inside for those injured but do we think about those left behind, do we think about the effect that accident will have on hundreds of people throughout the coming years, the families, the friends, the lovers of those injured or dead because of that accident?

Maybe we should, maybe that will make us come to our senses and do something about it.

What can 'I' do about it you say, well that's easy, we all find it so easy to say it's not my problem or the government should do something or, who the hell knows what other excuses we come up with but the point is this, you are out there with your friends, your colleagues, your family member and they are drinking or they are shoving something into their arm, up their nose, in their ear, up their ass I don't care.

Don't let them drive.

How much simpler does it have to be!

Hiroshima

2010-08-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

A Japanese report on the bombing characterized Nagasaki as
"like a graveyard with not a tombstone standing"

Why is it that whenever some TV show, radio broadcaster or do gooder anti nuclear arms crowd decides to bring up the last days of World War 2 when we bombed Japan that they always name Hiroshima but hardly ever speak of Nagasaki?

Why do we remember Hiroshima and say how bad it was for all those people to burn but rarely have the same concern or compassion for the 64,000 souls who either died instantly. or over a horrid period of time, some are still suffering, in Nagasaki???

Is it perhaps because Nagasaki should never have happened, that there is no excuse for that city being bombed, that it was not the original target, that it was unnecessary?

Guilt perhaps or maybe we simply don't don't care.

I understand that Hiroshima is more famous, hell it was the first time such a bomb had been used against the living and it was, if you believe the hype, the bomb that ended the war.
The Hiroshima bomb killed or injured twice the number as the one on Nagasaki, I understand that and I am not trying to lessen the impact of that on the families of those who suffered BUT!!!

64,000 people in Nagasaki suffered or died and hundreds of thousands more lost and watched their world change forever on August 9 1945, some of those people were not Japanese, they were Australian, British, American and other POW's interned there at the time.

Now I know that there are web pages and historical documents, studies and all kinds of other things around that give us the right to say we don't ignore Nagasaki but that isn't my point.
When we speak out about Hiroshima, be it as an argument against nuclear weapons or unsafe power or terrorism or conservation or whatever we just DON'T mention Nagasaki and I personally feel that this is disgusting, it is an insult to those poor bloody souls who still today live with the memory and loss that city suffered.

When people have the opportunity to speak out on behalf of Japan then they should not leave Nagasaki or its residents aside, that city should have as much importance on the world stage as any other and is just as valid an argument, in some cases a better one, against nuclear arms.

I have been there, I have seen the pain and anguish that still lives in the hearts and minds of many older residents there but even they themselves have all but given up on the idea that their suffering is as important as that of the people in Hiroshima but then, isn't that the Japanese way, the suffering of others is always greater than their own.

It is up to us, the average Joe and Sarah in the world to give these people a voice that they won't raise themselves, to make sure the world doesn't simply brush Nagasaki under the rug, doesn't forget what we did there on August 9 1945 and it seems for no other reason than because we needed to 'test' another delivery system with minimal casualties.

My father, George Joseph Wilson Taylor, was there that day, he was one of many POW's in a camp just off shore and watched the bomb come down, they were betting as to what the parachute held, they had no idea, nor did the people of Nagasaki, that their world was about to change forever. My father is the reason I went there, he is the reason I love Japan and its people, because despite being a POW, despite being spat on by many WWII vets who fought the Japanese and consequently hate them, he learned respect for them because he was there that day, he saw a side of the Japanese 'machine' that was very very human and from that experience he instilled into me a great respect for life and for people.

The war was ended, 64,000 is not minimal!

Mobile phones

2010-03-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Mobile phones, what have they done to us?

Since the introduction of the humble, now commonplace, mobile phone we have seen an increase in accidents, the introduction of new road rules, new fines, convictions and a distinct decline in that little thing called manners.

It's one thing to see a young woman driving down the road with a lipstick in one hand, a mobile in the other and her knees controlling, or trying to control, the steering, but when you see the baby capsule in the back, complete with baby, well that's just wrong.

It's one thing to see a man with a mobile phone to one ear, a Big Mac in his mouth and his free hand trying to adjust the volume on his MP3 player while driving in traffic, but when that man happens to be driving a semi, now that's just scary.

We all do it, we all make the mistake of answering that damned mobile while we are driving, we all find it impossible to NOT read 'and answer' the text message while trying to navigate a bend or worse a school zone.

We sit is restaurants and for a nice relaxing evening with friends, family or that special person and at the next table, in almost all directions, there is some dick chatting unashamedly on a bloody mobile phone, I mean isn't that just bad manners or am I just a stick in the mud who should shut the fuck up and eat my whale meat sandwich?

This evening I happened to be in the mens room of one of Canberra's finest hotels, you don't need to know why, suffice it to say I was behind a door. Anyway, I hear the main doors open and in walks this guy, up to the urinals, down goes the fly and , well, you get the idea. Now, in itself this isn't a bad thing right, of course not, men are men and sometimes we have to go to the loo, but do we really have to do what this guy did?

Now remember, I'm behind a door, I can hear everything clearly, can't see anything but I can hear. This guy starts talking, obviously to some girl somewhere and obviously on his mobile. The conversation, naturally one sided to my ears, goes something like this....

"Yeah g'day, I got your text and thought I'd (fart) give you a call"...

(pause)

"ahhhh... yeah I know, so what (fart) you reckon (sounds of urine hitting the urinal, noisily) if I come grab (fart) you we could go to a club or something?"

(A long pause broken only by 2 more rather loud farts)

"Ok, "ill come (sound of zipper going up) and grab you in ab(fart)out 15"

(pause)

"Oh farrrk (long fart), ok see you then"

Now I'm sorry, but no man with any taste, decency or manners would even think of calling a girl or woman while happily pissing in a urinal, this guy was just so disgusting and he didn't give a hoot in hell about the girl he was speaking to, if he did he would have had more decency and waited until he had finished his grotty business and was once more in the relative peace of the outside world before calling her, he was after all responding to a text message, not actually answering a call!

I am quite serious, this actually happened at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Bunda Street Canberra at roughly 9.45pm tonight.

I was raised in a era where people treated people with some respect, I was raised with manners like eat with your mouth closed, don't cough over food, wash your hands after doing unseemly things, open a door for a lady and "you'll go blind if you keep doing that!".

Now forgive an old stick in the mud who believes that those values he grew up with are not yet extinct but ladies please PLEASE, you don't have to put up with men who treat you like shit, which is exactly what this guy in the mens room was doing to the girl on the other end of that call, I mean really, how low an opinion of yourself must you have to believe you must accept that kind of trash in your life.

Guys, seriously, if these women who grace our lives were to suddenly be gone we would very soon realise that without them we are nothing and eventually would not be at all!
Isn't it time we started to treat people in a way we want to be treated?

Admittedly we are guys and that in itself means that if some girl called us and we knew she was on the toilet it would probably turn us on, because we have two unbalanced brains and when the lower one is active everything else shuts down but really, without women we are nothing unless we are gay and even then we are nothing because gay men can't reproduce anything other than artwork and designs.

If you really believe it is ok to call a girl while pissing into a urinal, if you really believe that the girl you are calling isn't worth any more than the crap you flush when finished then here is a great suggestion for you.

Shove your head as far down the toilet bowl as you can, open your mouth wide and have somebody, possibly the girl you think so lowly of, flush it, because that's where you and your attitude belong!!

One more thing, if you are driving and your mobile phone rings or you get a text for fucks sake pull over safely, even if it does make you 30 seconds late for work or your bloody hairdresser appointment, before you answer the damned thing.

Here's something to think about, also what prompted this post....

Today I drove past an accident scene where the police and emergency crews were cutting open what was left of a car to extract what was left of a little girl. The driver (mother of the little girl) was sitting head in hands, blood everywhere while the driver of the truck that had written them off was being pushed into the back seat of a police car. I have a scanner...

The driver of the truck was answering a text message on his mobile, didn't see the lights change.

How would you feel if you drove past that accident and realised that was your mother, your sister, your cousin with her head in her hands and the little girl was family?

PLEASE PEOPLE... PULL OVER BEFORE YOU ANSWER!

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Kids and violence

2010-02-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

I learned something today, well had something confirmed might be a better way to put it.

I was talking with a Child Protection agency person who had just spoken to an 8 year old and had been told by that 8 year old that she was being hit at the place she stays much of the time. To me this is just a not on situation, the girl stays with people other than her parents for a variety of reasons, none of which include bad behavior by the way, and she gets hit, slapped across the face etc.

Now, when this agency person spoke to me about this situation her words not only shocked me, they made me somewhat angry because she said, and I quote, "it's not the man who hits her, it's only the woman and that's all right".

I'm sorry but firstly that ISN'T all right at all and secondly she has never even seen this woman or the size and weight ratio between her and the child, trust me, a grown man wouldn't take a hit from this woman and not hurt.

When did it become 'all right' for a woman to hit a child but not all right for a man?

I don't recall anything in any legislation anywhere that distinguishes between a mans smack in the head and a woman's smack in the head, especially when the recipient of said smack in the head is a child.

Violence against anybody is not on but violence against a child is just, well lets say I would like an hour in a room with the person using that violence, me and a cabbage.

A smack for being continually naughty is discipline and a learning aid but ONLY if that smack is administered by a parent, mum OR dad and only when it is a smack on the backside or the hand - NOT THE FACE!!!

A smack from somebody who is NOT a parent is acceptable if needed for the same reason, discipline AND the actual parents have given permission for such discipline but the same rules apply, backside or hand NOT HEAD!!

We do not allow teachers in schools to hit our children, the law doesn't allow them to hit children either, the cane and strap were outlawed and violence against children is NOT allowed in school, even between children and before you go pointing at the US and other places where kids go on shooting rampages, I am in Australia and we don't allow our kids to go to school armed to the teeth, teachers here don't have to wear body amour... yet.

So tell me, where does a child protection worker get the idea that its ok for a woman to slap a child across the face but its not ok for the man of the house?

Where does a child protection worker get the notion that a child, ANY CHILD, can take a few slaps across the face from somebody who isn't even related to them as long as that somebody is a woman?

I agree that some children require more discipline than others and I agree that parents should be allowed to do so where required because its all part of teaching, learning and growing up to be a responsible adult ready to face a world full of challenges, it didn't do me any harm and my parents didn't hold back the occasional smack when I was wrong.

What I don't agree with is allowing some other piece of shit who isn't even related to my child to be slapping them across the face or bullying them or allowing them to be bullied just because they happen to be staying with them, especially when the parents have NOT given permission for such actions.

I don't give 2 shits if you have studied for 3 years, I don't care a hoot in hell if you are qualified to give an opinion and I don't give a rats arse if you do have the authority to take a child away from its parents, if you think its ok for a woman to hit a child in that situation but not a man, then you don't deserve to have that authority and you have wasted 3 years of your life because you learned nothing!

Smacking a child on the bum or the hand to teach and direct is discipline, anything else is violence and it should NEVER be tollerated by ANYBODY for ANY REASON!

A child annoys you, a child ignores you, a child speaks harshly to you, shows you no respect so you slap them across the face to show your anger or disappointment.

How about I do the same to you every time you do something that annoys or disappoints me?

Don't worry, I'll wear a dress and makeup so it will be acceptable it seems.

Brainless

2010-01-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

I have always been amazed at the stupidity of those who want so hard to believe in something, some power above them, that they will walk, wallet in hand, into the most bizarre religions ever to materialize on this earth. I guess I could name them all but really, I don't need to because they speak for themselves.

Imagine if you will, a man somewhere, nobody actually knows where or for that matter if the individual actually exists, who decides that the bible is far to complicated for your average layman to understand so he re-writes it... Cartoon Style!!
Now you may say so what and I would agree with you because everybody has the right to do whatever the hell they want to do because free speech and free expression is a reality these days, but, and this is a big but.. there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in this world today who not only follow this mad genius's ideas but actually produce this little cartoon booklet when you ask them to quote the Bible, they don't open an actual Bible, they open a cartoon book and AND!! they give him every damned cent the earn or raise while they themselves survive on handouts and begging.

Now, let me ask you, what exactly does all this money they give this man go towards?
Would it be the trip to heaven or perhaps a big present for God or maybe subscriptions to the new edition of the cartoon book? Not really and anybody with anything that even looks like it might be a brain of some sort can work it out that this Mr Somebody who lives in any one of 8 multimillion dollar mansions across the globe doesn't even believe in heaven, unless it is printed on the face of cash, any denomination, any currency in any country.

The one thing that attracts the men to this cult, and that's what it is, a cult, are not attracted by spirituality but by the practice of Free Love, that's right guys, if you are a male member of this religion and you 'claim' to be on missionary work and you lob at the home of another member who happens to have a gorgeous wife, you are made my friend because that other member must allow you to have sex with his wife!!

Then there are the 144000 believers who will get into heaven, the rest of us may as well whistle Dixie because we ain't in the select few and yet here they are, trying their hardest to recruit new believers. Doesn't matter that the 144000 have already been selected, doesn't matter that every new believer who gains entry to heaven does so at the expense of another, who cares!! Oh and did I mention that only MEN make it?

What about the dumb ass brainless idiots who believe that aliens impregnated us all and we are simply incubators waiting for the alarm to sound?

You see, there is lots of money to be made in religion, shit loads of it in fact for anybody who has a good idea and no problem ripping off others, new religious orders are springing up all the time, well they are mostly cults but they rake in the cash.
I had an idea some time back which I shared with one or two people, who then shared it, or at least their own version of it with others who in turn... you get the idea.
I was actually asked why I wasn't writing a book on my ideas and why I didn't start a religious following because there were, within 2 months, 11296 people who heard about and wanted to become part of this new 'idea'.
I could have made a f*cking fortune pretty much overnight if I were so inclined but you see, as my family have pointed out on many occasions, I am too damned nice!

I am so tired of seeing people ripped off, even the gullible deserve respect and to see these people sucked in to cults that are so blatantly bullshit just annoys the living crap out of me. Main stream religions don't give a crap about the cults because they can use them to further their own needs, in fact many 'cults' exist within main stream religion, just look at all the splinter groups that have come from Catholicism, Orthodox, Buddhism, Judaism and even the Protestants, how many kinds are there!!

Seems to me that almost all religions share a single aim, that people treat others as they would like to be treated, it's pretty simple when you think about it. The problem is that there is money to be made, lots of it, and that will almost always take precedence over everything else. The other thing on offer in religion is power.

Power is fundamentally corrupting, it has an effect that cancels right and wrong, it nullifies compassion and it destroys trust. The Garden of Eden story has more to teach than meets the eye, maybe we should all read it again some time.

The other thing we should all read is the story of Jesus Christ and what he did, no not just the dying part, his life too, what he taught, where he taught, how he taught and who he taught.

Every religion has a hero, a prophet, a messiah, a sacrificial lamb, a scapegoat or even a God who lives under many names, but they all have the same message and that message is not so different from what Jesus taught, it isn't the man, its the lesson.

I guess I'm just annoyed at stupidity, not just the stupidity of the cults and their lessons but the stupidity of those who believe them. There are people in this world dying for lack of a single dollar that could feed them, give them medicine, clothe them and here we are giving out bank account details to money hungry assholes who don't give a flying shit what we really believe as long as we keep giving them money.

I seriously hope there is a heaven because that means there is a hell and that makes me feel just a little better because I know those people who rip off the ignorant and the gullible will finally pay the price.

If I'm Catholic I can do whatever the hell I want and go confess, some guy in a robe behind a mesh window will forgive me, tell me my penance and I can go do it all again til next week.

If I am protestant then I'm saved simply because I believe and if I believe then I will always try to do the right thing and always have compassion and respect for others right? Well maybe!

If I'm a Child of God then I just claim to be on missionary work and come have sex with you or your wife.

You know what, if some of these cults/religions are right and most of us won't be going to heaven then why the hell are we even bothering to try, why are we not just going out and taking what we want, doing what we want and to hell (forgive the pun) with the consequences, who cares, if I'm headed for hell then I'll have a shit load of company it seems.

Fear keeps us in line, as kids we feared punishment from parents or authority figures.
As adults we fear imprisonment, we fear God and we fear hell, its what keeps us in line, its what makes us stop before we do stupid things that will cause harm or that we just know to be wrong, fear makes us respect others.

The Church uses fear to control us, even in Sunday school, we are brow beaten with the thought that hell awaits us if we don't go to heaven and that heaven is hard to get to, camel through the eye of a needle etc.

The one thing about cults that gives them an edge is that they offer hope, they offer reward, maybe not heaven, maybe just sex or coming back as a butterfly but at least they offer hope of something, an attainable goal.

They also take all your money and your common sense.

They just don't get it!

2009-12-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

Driving down Hindmarsh Drive in Canberra yesterday minding my own business in my 2.6 ton Patrol when this little blue Mazda wanders happily across into my lane in front of me.

I wouldn't have minded so much except no indication, no looking in the mirrors first, no looking to see if there was anything, like a 2.6 ton 4WD, bearing downhill towards them and why? well that's simple, the female driver was far too busy chatting with somebody on her mobile to be bothered with the fact that she might just die in about 2 seconds.

Now I have a mobile, in fact I have 2 of them (long story), but I also have Bluetooth and hands free in my 4B, not hard to do, not expensive and in most new cars these days it is standard in the sound system anyway, certainly in the model of Mazda this woman was driving it is, but people don't use the hands free, they still, even after all the warnings, all the accidents, all the fines, they still use the fucking mobile while driving in traffic, they just don't get it!

I even overtook this woman and positioned myself in front of her, where she couldn't miss the sign in my back window that says 'would your driving be any better if I shoved that mobile phone up your arse' but no, she kept talking to whoever it was and she kept wandering across lanes in front of others.

Now she isn't the only one and I'm not aiming this at women because men do it too, idiots who think it will never happen to them, well this is one guy here to tell you all that if you are talking or texting on your mobile while you are driving and if you happen to cause an accident in which one of my loved ones dies or is forever damaged then you had better find a way to get on the next space shuttle because I will come looking for you and when I find you, you will wish you had never seen a mobile phone.

Seriously, I wish I were a cop, I wish more cops could be on the roads to pull these frigging imbeciles over and book them, take points off them, take their mobile and shove it up their arse, something, anything to make them realise just how dangerous it is to hold a mobile to your ear and chat or worse still text, while you are in control of a lethal weapon traveling at 80kmph in traffic.

You know what the worst thing yesterday was about this woman in the Mazda? she had 2 kids in the back, one in a capsule, the other in a child seat.

What kind of mother would allow her children to be driven around by an idiot with a death wish?

They just don't get it!!

Eye of the beholder

2009-11-15T23:23:00.000-08:00

You know what, I can walk into an art gallery, spot something I really like and say 'wow, that's beautiful', most people would probably agree. I could walk past a jeweler, spot a necklace or ring and say 'wow, isn't that gorgeous', again, no arguments. I could see a really cute baby or pretty young girl dancing around in a pink dress and say ' how beautiful is she' and the parents would be smiling because they know I'm right.

Why is it then that if see a beautiful woman or teenage girl (and yes I suppose if I were a woman I would say men or boys, but I'm not, I'm a guy and most likely A Typical), and I say that she is beautiful I am immediately berated or accused of unthinkable things, classed as a 'dirty old man' or told not to be so silly?

Why?

Because we as a society, probably for very good reasons, have decided that once you reach a certain age some things are no longer appropriate for you, some things you just can't say no matter how you feel because you are 'OLD'!!

Until today I thought the world had lost the plot, I thought manners were extinct, I thought respect was on the endangered species list and class? well I thought class had been assassinated, as I say, until today.

This afternoon, November 16 2009 at about 5.45pm I was sitting enjoying a Frozen Coke from my local Woden Plaza Macca's when a lady, and I call her that for a reason, walked past me. I do not know who she is, I do not know where she came from and I do not know where she went but for a few seconds of my life today I smiled because Class is still alive.

I'm not that good at guessing ages but if I had to it would be late 30's early 40's, around 165 to 168cm and while she was no model she was very attractive and had a rather nice figure. Straight hair down to just below her shoulders, not overly dark, nice color with a hint of blond in there. Caucasian, wearing dark pants and a dark top.

All of that, how she looked and dressed, wasn't what caught my eye, it was something about her, the way she held herself, the almost smile on her attractive face, a certain glint in her eye, her walk, her style, her confidence.

She was CLASSY!

I see an attractive young thing walking by and all my male senses kick in, all the desires man is burdened with, all the wants and thoughts that come with them, but let a classy lady walk by me and the whole feeling is different, I just smile.

It has been a while since I saw class and I didn't realise how much I missed it, how important in my life it is because I was raised in that era when class meant something, it isn't the kind of class you see in movies, it isn't the kind of class that creates division, it isn't the kind of class that pits race against race, it is CLASS, it is something that just melts my heart and makes me smile.

I hoped that this lady would come back my way, I waited a while because I actually wanted to thank her for bringing back my faith, for showing me something that my heart and soul needed to see.

She didn't come back and perhaps it's just as well because who knows what she would have thought of some old bloke like me walking up to her and telling her this stuff?

Whoever you are young lady I hope life treats you well and I hope you pass on that style, that class, to your children because it needs to live on, we need to remember that life can be beautiful and that God is an artist extraordinaire!

I may walk into that art gallery one day or pass that jeweler or see that small child, that baby and say 'wow' isn't that beautiful', but what I see will not make me smile as I did today :)

Update 12/03/2010:

I found her, she works at a medical practice up the road. I took one of my boys in because he needed to see a doctor, never been there before and when we walked in, there she was behind the reception desk with 3 other women and even there she instantly caught my eye.
Class, it lives :)

Christmas, the time of giving

2009-11-11T13:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas..... F... A... R... K!!!!!!

I looked at my bank account today, I had a deep and meaningful with my money, hard earned let me tell you. We had this deep and meaningful because we both knew the time was fast approaching when we would have to say goodbye to each other, it isn't a parting either of us want but there are times when you just have to say it.

Birthdays are one thing, I don't mind spending a few dollars on a birthday present for somebody I love and care about, hell I'll even spend a few dollars on a birthday present for somebody I don't know, as long as they invite me to the party, fairs fair.

If I were rich, limitless finances, then it wouldn't matter so much but I'm not, I often wake up in the mornings and shake my arm vigorously to see if $20 dollar bills fall off it, you know, to see if my wish, and the firm belief held by my kids, has come true and I have turned into a money tree, but it hasn't happened yet.

Side note here: if money doesn't grow on trees, why do banks have branches?

Every dollar I spend has been earned, it hasn't fallen into my lap, God hasn't finally decided that I deserve better, the Lotto people haven't fixed the numbers so I get a huge payout every month and I don't have a fairy God Mother or a pretty witch with a cute nose for a wife, so when I spend a dollar I hold a mental Olympics to balance my books and make sure I haven't just thrown dinner tomorrow down the toilet.

I, like millions of other parents, have to live and make sure my kids do likewise, for this I have to buy food, pay bills, buy clothes, pay for excursions, pay for cinema's, pay for bowling, buy shoes, put fuel in the car, pay rego so I can drive it, pay insurance because as sure as hell one of the kids mates is going to key it or worse.
Then there are the expenses of what the damned kids do wrong, you know, one of them decides to join his/her mates, pinch a school laptop and kick the shit out of it, one of them decides setting fire to the school science lab seems like fun, one of them finds holding on the the rear end of a bus while on a skateboard is easier, etc. etc.

So here I am, brain in meltdown, wallet in the gutter and working my ass off to pull it all back together again and along comes Christmas!

Now I'm sorry if this pisses off Christian's and those who think we should all bring gifts like the 3 wise men, who incidentally were not poor by any shake of the stick (or arms) in the spirit of the day, but that isn't what Christmas is all about and the first person who suggested that it was probably owned a toy store.

Jesus Christ did not walk around to all his friends constantly giving them PS2's and DVD's and Cars and Necklaces and Ipods and well you get the idea, his gift was to be born and spend the next 33 years trying to show us what being human is all about, that didn't involve going to David Jones or Wallmart and spending his hard earned shells just so his friends and family felt he loved them.

Hell people, he even got angry with those morons who used a place of worship to sell goods, he got angry at people trying to make money in his fathers house and yet today I can show you places of worship where retailers flourish, where the sale of religious items is big business, especially at Christmas.

Now I know that Christmas is a time of giving, I read the Bible, in fact I read 7 different versions of it including the 5 extra books that were not officially recognised but included in the Jerusalem Bible. I know what Christmas and Easter are all about and I know what giving is all about but really, who the hell is going to give to me next year when I can't buy food, when my bank account is hanging on that piece of wood 8 feet off the ground, when my kids are the ones shaking my arms so they can go to the movies or wear Nike Air's.

Here we are in the 21st Century and still we feed the major retailers across the world, still we fill the pockets of those who CAN shake their arms and have happy children pick up $20 bills that fall magically off them and we do it because we have been programmed into believing that this is what Christmas is all about!

When I was a kid and yeah I know, here we go with the 'back in my day' bullshit, but read on because while it may be one of those that doesn't mean it isn't true and valid. When I was a kid there were no PS2's. no DVD's, no Ipods and MP3 players, things were a little simpler and yes my parents bought presents at Christmas but that wasn't, even to a young lad like myself, what Christmas was about.

Christmas for me was seeing all my family, seeing my grandma and granddad, eating fantastic baked dinners, unwrapping a wooden toy soldier carved by my uncle, opening a little box filled with a hand made jigsaw. Christmas was about love and family and being together, if I didn't get a present, and there were years I didn't, it didn't matter because I was where I wanted to be doing what I wanted to do, I was happy. If I had nothing else to do I would take that little wooden soldier out back and spend hours creating my own world where things turned out well, I even used the jigsaw puzzle in that world.

Today I ask my kids what they all want for Christmas and here are the results.

A car, a PS3, a 140cm Flat Screen TV, a frigging great big Plasma for my room, a Laptop (Mac), $10,000, PS3 Games, a Trampoline (happy with that and went straight out and bought it), my own room (see Renovation), a Dog and (my personal favorite) an In Ground Pool.

What the hell happened to the wooden toy soldier, the hand sewn Teddy Bear, the Jigsaw puzzle, the extra bit of custard on my pudding, the Book?

I don't mind buying presents for my kids, or for any kids for that matter mine or not, but when it becomes an obligation, then I get annoyed and Christmas has now become an obligation in my life, very few people (apart from the obvious) in my life are happy just to be here with me, very few people in my life these days expect nothing from me and sadly, nothing is all I have left because I have given so many times to so many people.

So this Christmas I have a rule and it is simple.
Up to the age of 10 you are entitled to expect a present and hell, you deserve one, Santa said so and I've met him, I ain't arguing with him or those bloody Elves.

However, if you are over 10 then don't hold your hand out or expect a present because you will be disappointed.

Over 10 years of age you can come have dinner or a BBQ with us, you can share my food and my hospitality, you can even drink my beer, sleep in my beds and play my guitars if you feel a need but as far as presents go, ain't gonna happen.

My kids themselves have already been told that any presents they get this year will be outdoor or exercise related, Mountain Bikes, Trampoline, Gym Set, Frisbies, Footballs etc because I want them out and away from TV and Computer screens, PS2's and DVD's.

Christmas day at my place will be open to all comers, I will spend money on making my back yard a place where people can mingle, get to know each other, renew old friendships, eat, drink and be merry (drunks will be shown the door very fast) and generally enjoy the day. You want more that that then go see Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates.

Call me a tight arse, call me mean, call me whatever the hell you want but I can assure you that what little money I have left is not about to be thrown into the pockets of some group of financial mercenaries just so my kids can be programmed deeper into the world of no imagination.

Ok, you can say I'm an old bloke who wishes the good old days were still here, and you would be right because I do still remember sitting by a creek watching small frogs and fish, I still remember making an entire war zone out of a few wooden soldiers and a grassy hillside, I still remember making an entire road system and a construction zone in a patch of dirt that was a back yard for a 9 year old who only had 4 tin trucks to play with, I do remember a lot of days spent walking through long grass and rolling down hills in Bluebells, I had an imagination then, I still have it now.

I don't need to spend $600 on a Game Console and $60 a hit on games to come up with something to do, just give me 2 or 3 Tonka Trucks or an old Train Set that doesn't work any more and I'll take them out my back yard and show you how to have fun.

My grandson and I were at a cafe not long back, at this cafe there was an outdoor area which had a home made waterfall that fed a channel made out of piping and a small pond at the end. My grandson was watching the water flow and I was watching him. His mind was stagnating as he watched that water so I picked up a dead leaf and dropped it at the top of the waterfall.

My grandson suddenly discovered an entire world right there, his imagination kicked in and we spent the next hour having a ball AND other kids came over to watch, then they got the imaginations working and before long you couldn't get them away from it. By the time we were finished a bunch of kids had created an entire scene for the next Indiana Jones movie, and all it took was a dead leaf, a small home made waterfall and some really good imaginations (something all kids have, encourage it).

Don't try to tell me I live in a fantasy world just because I remember the good old days and don't try and convince me that fun = money, that dead leaf cost me nothing but gave me, my grandson (who by the way is 8 years old) and a bunch of other kids, boys and girls, so much life.

So, Christmas.... F... A... R... K!!!!

It's coming but I will still have a dollar in my wallet when it is gone and I won't be in debt with a credit card made of concrete around my neck. I may not be rich in January but I won't be broke, I won't owe anybody anything and my kids will be happy.

How about you?

Hamburgers

2009-11-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Don't you just love those ads on TV for MacDonalds and Hungry Jacks and KFC and whatever the hell else you can think of, you know the ones, they show you some 'you could never look as good as me' person being handed some product that you personally have never seen before, at least not in anything you have been handed from one of these outlets.

These ads show some guy or gal you would be very pleased to take home to meet mom opening, or worse eating, a burger that looks like it was made in heaven, everything exactly where it should be and not too much of any single ingredient right?

I have NEVER been handed such a burger, not at Macca's, Hungries, KFC or anywhere else, every single one of these things when it comes out to greet you does so like some drunken layabout who just crawled out of a garbage bin, it drips mayo and sauce all over you, lettuce escapes and laughs itself silly as it heads for the ground or the pocket of your new shirt, the cheese is lop sided and slowly stretching towards earth, the pickle, gerkin or whatever the hell you call it spits out the side when you put any pressure at all on the bun, if that's what it really is and then you hit the meat.

Now seriously, have you ever taken the time to lift that meat pattie out of the mess its in and had a good look at it? I have because my youngest boy, at the ripe old age of 12, likes to eat his burgers one item at a time, so I get the rare honor of seeing exactly what lives between those bun halves. This brown to gray stuff they laughingly refer to as 100% Aussie (or wherever you happen to live) Beef is no closer to real beef than a Duck is to a Polar Bear, there may be some distant relationship between the two but it has long since gone extinct.

At least when you go to your local take away you can be pretty well assured that the meat within the burger has a much better lineage than the Duck referred to above :)

But it doesn't stop there, the coffee, McCafe coffee, in the ads it looks absolutely perfect and so does the guy making it, where the hell is this clean upright young man because he doesn't work at any McCafe I have seen and while we are on the subject, where is the lovely 'please let me take you home with me to meet my mom' young woman who seems absolutely sexually satisfied by just one lick of the lid.

The people I have seen making that coffee are usually pimple faced, sweaty, overweight and, forgive me but, slovenly animals that I wouldn't let near my kitchen and the coffee? oh my God I could make better coffee in a billy can over a fire.

What the hell happened to Macca's, they used to be fast, they personified Fast Food, you knew that if you needed a quick food hit you could go to Macca's or KFC or Hungries and within seconds you had what you knew well, it tasted exactly how you expected and it stayed together as you ate it.

These days it has to be 'cooked to order' because some dickhead somewhere just HAD to have a fucking whinge so now we not only wait for it, they are so frigging run off their feet most times because of it that they just throw the bloody things together, its a wonder they even stay together in the box.

Now, lets add to this the fact, and on this I speak with some knowledge because my daughter worked for Macca's for a year, that some workers, young as they are, get so annoyed at the hot and thankless work they do for less hourly than I would pay them to walk my dog, that they sometimes, and note I say 'sometimes' feel the urge to allow some of their bodily fluids to become entangled with the food, ie. Spit.

This might explain why sometimes, not always, but sometimes the pickle slides out :)

The service at these places, lets talk about that, it will be a very quick conversation because there isn't any,

It's 'What?' 'wanna upsize that?' 'anything else?' 'next!'

Bring back the corner take away for Gods sake, bring back the REAL burger with the tomato sauce and the beetroot if you want it and the onion and the egg if you frigging well want it. I don't mind Macca's but honestly, the reason I started going there was the convenience of the place, the fact that it was quick and I knew what it would look and taste like, not any more.

I had a burger today from my local take away and I gotta tell you it was GOOD, it had what I wanted on it, it came with chips not fries and the bun was REAL bread but you know what struck me the most about it, it was the fact that not only was I eating what I considered to be a good burger but I was also supporting my local take away, my local bakery AND I had a great chat with one of those 'If I took you home to meet my mom she would put me back in her will' young ladies - AND SHE SERVED ME!

If they went back to what they had I would not be complaining about them but these places like MacDonalds, KFC and Hungry Jacks have become victims of the Do Gooders, the buttheads who complain about the most dumb ass things and create waves that the rest of us have to deal with.

They just piss me off :)

Private numbers

2009-11-08T16:59:00.001-08:00

You know what, I have some issues in my life that I need to pay special attention to, this means I need to be particular who I answer calls from, WHY?

Well, I have an ex wife who is somewhat vindictive, not to mention paranoid, who tells her boy friends (note I split the words so you wouldn't get the wrong idea) things about me and our life together that has seen at least 2 of them make threatening calls, so....

I don't answer Private Numbers when they flash up on my mobile, if you can't be bothered to let me know who you are then fuck you!

It really is as simple as that.

I mean seriously, if you call my mobile at 10.30am on a Monday morning and I don't answer then there is a pretty good chance that I am A. Busy or B. Driving so LEAVE A MESSAGE!! Don't just hang up and then call me tomorrow with some bullshit about me not making myself available or call lawyers because I obviously don't respond or hand me over to debt collectors because I was busy or driving you frigging moron!

Am I pissed off? You bet your popsicle sucking life I am, I am getting sick and tired of morons who work for places I don't want to talk to anyway calling me at the most inappropriate times, on PRIVATE numbers and NOT LEAVING A FUCKING MESSAGE to tell me who they are so I can CALL THEM BACK!

Now, if you happen to be one of these stupid people or perhaps you work for some stupid company who expects you to BE one of these stupid people then understand this.

If you call me and you show up on my phone as Private, I WILL NOT answer you unless I am in a particularly good mood AND I am not driving AND I am not busy at that moment.

If this occurs then do yourself a favor and LEAVE ME A MESSAGE, even if you are a debt collector and you lie and tell me you are a gorgeous blond wanting to make my day just that little bit better, just leave me a bloody number so I can call you back.

Lets face it, if you are a debt collector why do you care if you lie to get me to call you, as long as you get me on the end of the phone the method shouldn't matter, but if you are one of those 'oh we must do things by the book' people then Fuck You and Fuck your company because I'm not psychic and I won't call you back if I don't have your number.

Now, the most common people who call me with blocked numbers are Marketing Clowns trying to up-sell me or just plain sell me some fantastic service that I don't actually need, they are usually based in some place other than Australia and they rarely speak and kind of English I was ever taught.

I decided just the other day to answer one of these Private number calls and guess what? Optus trying to up-sell me from Pre Paid to Cap. Now, lets not start with the language barrier, lets start with basic intelligence.

If I am on a Pre Paid what would that tell you?
First it would tell me that this person, if they wanted a Cap, would have bought a Cap.
Second it would tell me that this person can't get a Cap because of credit problems.
Third it would tell me that this person, for whatever reason, doesn't want a Cap.

So, this guy, at least I think it was a guy, neither the name nor the voice helped much on that issue, first started by asking for somebody who was a total stranger to me, never heard of whoever it was and I told him/her so.

Next thing I know he/she is calling me by name and telling me 'it is fortunate' (that should give you some idea of where this person was) that I answered because Optus has selected me to receive this special deal yadda yadda yadda!

I wouldn't have minded so much, I wasn't in a hurry, I wasn't driving and I wasn't busy so I engage this person by stopping him/her mid-stream and advising that my credit rating is about as good as Saddam Husein and that I am on Pre Paid BECAUSE of that.

Didn't seem to matter, he/she told me that wouldn't be a problem (by the way, the mention of Saddam Husein didn't even phase them so either they were not listening or they were stupid) and that they would look at that later in the 'session'???

So, I answered one of those Private number calls and spent the next 25 minutes mostly on hold while they did this and that, asked ridiculous questions, gave me ridiculous promises and offered me ridiculous gifts.

The bottom line of this is simple, the guy/gal/moron came back on the line and told me that they were sorry but there was some problem with my credit reference check and they could not offer me the deal, I mean really, HELLO!! I told you this at the start!

Today I get a letter from Optus advising me that they could not offer me a service because Dunn and Bradstreet (for some unknown reason) had given me a smack on the wrist for being a bad boy over some bill I have never known anything about anyway.
Now, the fact that I have been an Optus customer for some 9 years and never missed a single payment, never been late for a payment and have 3 numbers ON CAPS ALREADY seems to make no difference to them, I am not a good payment prospect.

I don't mind that, it's cool to be left alone and it's cool that I have a bad credit rating because I don't give a shit, I have a Visa Debit card, don't want a Credit Card, don't need it. Pay for everything up front, apart from my 3 mobiles (long story) which are always direct debited anyway so never late and never missed. So go take a long walk off a very short pier with your deals and offers at Christmas and stop wasting my time right?

WRONG!

This morning I got a call, Private number again, and again, not busy, not driving, nothing better to do so I answered it.

Optus, wanting, in extremely broken English from somewhere that isn't in Australia, to offer me a fantastic deal.......

I DO NOT ANSWER PRIVATE NUMBERS!
LEAVE ME A MESSAGE OR TAKE YOUR PHONE AND SHOVE IT YOU KNOW WHERE, YOUR CHOICE!

5 years now, she ain't paying the damned bill!

2009-09-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

It's another case of just plain stupid, I mean this one really pissed me off big time, so much so that I called this company and told them I would shove the next letter up their arse.

My partner Teresa Finley passed away on October 24 2008, I had to deal with morons who kept insisting on speaking with her, despite having a death certificate sitting in front of them but that's not the worst of it, it gets better.

I have been receiving letters of demand lately from Telstra, for those who don't know, Telstra is our very own Australian telecommunications company, been around a while and supposedly staffed by very experienced people. Now the letters of demand I have been receiving are not for me, not even for my deceased partner Teresa, these letters are addressed to one Maryann O'Neil.

Maryann O'Neil, who was Maryann Finley until she married, was my partners younger sister and in 2004 she died from Leukemia, that's right, 2004, not yesterday, not last week or last year, 5 years ago.

My partner Teresa had care and custody of Maryann's children after she passed away (Maryann that is), and she herself sent the death certificate and burial paperwork to Telstra in 2005, then again in 2006, 2007 and while I was with her in 2008, so it isn't as if they don't actually know Maryann is dead.

Now, add to this they they threatened to disconnect MY phone here at the house if a $4000 bill was not paid, by Maryann, within the next 48 hours. MY last actual conversation with these people was yesterday afternoon during which I faxed them all the information on Maryann's death and burial again and STILL this stupid woman insisted on speaking with Maryann O'Neil, while staring at the faxed death certificate.

Now forgive my impatience here, forgive my racism, forgive me for even being alive but who the hell hires these people and why?

If you are sitting at a desk and you have in front of you the official documentation for the fact that the person you are looking for is dead, if you are reading from a document that clearly states the date and time of her funeral, if you have before you the coroners death report then surely you would assume that it may be difficult to speak to that person, especially since the dates on all these bits of apparently useless paper are 5 years ago.

Ok so I threatened to come jam the letter of demand up somebody's arse, ok that's a threat and maybe I shouldn't have made it, I am sorry I did, but really, can you blame me when I, and my deceased partner, have given these morons everything they need and everything they ever asked for (except $4000), to prove Maryann is dead.

Maryann's children have grown up visiting their mothers grave weekly, they have now gone through the loss of their auntie and lets face it second mother, they don't need to be told they have to pay a bill that WASN'T EVEN THEIR MOTHERS!

That's right, it isn't even her bill because the dates are AFTER she passed away and AFTER the phone line was disconnected.

Maybe I'm just a cranky old fart, maybe I should just sit down and shut the fcuk up but I just won't do that and the very next letter of demand that arrives addressed to Maryann O'Neil will find its way into a dark, wet and smelly place hidden inside the pants of an employee from Telstra.

Sponsoring overseas kids

2009-03-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

Australian Blogs

Somebody takes a photo of some underfed, under educated dirty kid in a street somewhere and puts together a 'donate now to sponsor this child' web site and suddenly all those would be parents who want to feel good about themselves start sending money.

Now we pretty much already know that even the 'valid' organisations only see 30% of that money actually getting to the child in any way at all, we already know that most of your so called 'donation' is used to pay 'volunteers', but still the money flows.

What shits me is simple, there are people, including children, right here at home, in your own fcuking country, that need help, these are kids you can actually see, touch, talk to, help, take out for picnics, buy Christmas presents for but no, that would be too much wouldn't it, that would mean you have to take some responsibility, that would mean you have to get involved.

These people that send their money to sponsor some child in 'Chile' or the 'Island of Kids with no homes', these people, or most of them, are losers who think only of themselves and the image they portray to others, they don't give a flying shit about the so called child they hold up as being helped, they just hold up their own vanity and big heartedness to show off that they A. have spare money and B. use it for good purpose.

There are people, children, in their own country who starve, go without school, go without clothing, go without a roof over their heads, sleep on park benches, in bus shelters, in parks, in back yards for Christs sake because they are in hard times.
Ok so maybe they did put themselves there, maybe they could go out and get a job, maybe a lot of things could happen but I'll tell you what ISN'T happening, they are not seeing those same people with the spare money and wish to do good even looking in their direction.

Let me finish by saying this, I know of certain journalists who 'sponsor' some child overseas, these journalists write about their own actions, brag about what they have done, talk about how good 'they' feel knowing they have helped some poor underprivileged child somewhere they will never see, visit, laugh with or even know.

All the time there are children dying of starvation here, there are children going through their early years, years when they should be learning about life, playing games, enjoying being alive, actually being beaten, being abused, being kept away from school.

Ok, maybe some of these kids here at home are indigenous (like kids in Chile or Uganda aren't?), maybe their parents are drug addicts, maybe mum and dad are lazy pricks but what the hell does that matter? The kids didn't choose to be part of this or that family, the kids didn't ask to be born whatever color they happen to be, the kids didn't ask to be raised in a lifestyle that sees them addicted to petrol, metho, heroine, nicotine or whatever other shit their parents do.

Why are these journalists, if they are so fucking concerned about the plight of children, not doing something about their own back yard, why are they not writing articles about the poverty and fear here in their own back yards?

I'll tell you why, because they don't give a shit about that, they only care about their own fcuking image, they only care about their own career and their desire to be the best.

Seriously, there is one journalist I know well, Nicole Manktelow (I should know her because I was married to her and with her for 15 years), who went to Western Australia, to the Kimberly to do a story on the plight of Indigenous peoples and the children who were suffering because of a lack of funding in the community for health care. She even had photo's taken of the children there crawling all over her, she was so emotional about them. She made a Video Documentary about this community and the problems they face.
A lovely sentiment, honestly, I thought she really cared.

What she really cared about became obvious 'after' we got back to safe comfortable Sydney and it wasn't the community or the children, it was her career.

You see, this woman didn't even get the documentary to air, she bragged about it, she told all her friends what she had done but she never got it to air, despite my advice and assistance because she didn't really care, she had done her thing, she had gone all that way to make the documentary, at my expense let me say, that was all she wanted, to look good.

She now sponsors a child in Chile, a child she can never see, never even prove exists, and she does this so she can do what? That's right, 'Brag about it', make herself feel good, give the image of somebody who cares, show people, friends and most importantly her 'readers' that she cares and is such a nice person.

Allow me to give you insight here, for the 15 years we were together she did nothing but run these organisations down, she swore she would never get sucked in by them because she knew where the money really went, hell she even wrote articles bagging them. So why now does she suddenly change her mind?

Because after she walked out on me for a younger man I was reunited with an old flame and the fire still burned, so I moved to where she lived and we started again.
She passed away and left 5 kids under 18 with nobody.

These kids were in need and I could easily have walked away from them, they were not hers, they were her deceased sisters children who had been handed to her by the courts.

I didn't walk away because I believe in actually putting my hand up and jumping in feet first to make sure kids like that don't get left in the mud. Now these kids don't live overseas, they don't write me notes that are photocopied and sent to me via email, they exist right here on my doorstep and to get involved, to help these children I have to make a REAL commitment, not just $30 a month. I have to give them the next 8 years of my life, literally.

I haven't only taken them on but I have become involved right here in my own back yard with groups that help other kids in similar need, I get involved.

I haven't written a story about what I have done on my own website and advertised it all over the place, I am not asking for applause or admiration and I don't give a hoot if you believe me, admire me, applaud me or not because what you do, what you think of me, makes no difference at all, I will still be here for these kids, I will still give my time and my money to helping them have a better life and you know what, my reward is actually being there when they get awards, being there at Christmas, being there to play soccer, tennis, have BBQ's, being there to have them cry on my shoulder, being there when they need me, just being there.

So I don't send $30 a month to boost some persons bank balance in return for a bullshit photo and photocopied note, I don't go around feeling good about myself because I send that money every single month, money I can afford because I make in excess of $130k a year AND I can claim it back on tax.

I put my money where my mouth is and follow it with my feet, hands, mind, life.
I actually care in real terms, shame others don't.

Christmas cheer, yeah right!

2008-12-24T02:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas, that time of year when you forgive people who wrong you and spread thoughts of joy and happiness, it's that time when a child was born 2008 years ago, give or take 10, that we nailed to a cross some 33 years later, happy time.

Well, try as I may I find it hard to forgive people who constantly shit on you from great heights, charge you $99 for something that cost $75 three days ago, abuse you for finding that park before they did or just plain piss me off. Yeah I know, I should and all that but honestly who the hell are they to try making my life more miserable just because they didn't get sex this morning, and hell when I look at most of them I'm not the least bit surprised they didn't get any.

I think I have the right to say go fcuk yourselves rather than get all depressed because I did something that might annoy them, if they get annoyed that easily maybe they should have stayed in bed anyway and prayed, its also the time of miracles isn't it?

Here I sit at 10.07pm on Christmas Eve and all I hear from the kids is fights and arguments over stupid things that make me think twice about giving them the bloody presents under the tree, I mean if I give them this stuff it will simply give them more to fight and argue over because they can't seem to share without somebody losing an eye or getting a bloody nose.

As a parent, or even a guardian, I am not allowed to discipline my kids with anything more than a 'hey guys please don't kill each other or the cat', I can't shout at them, that's verbal abuse, I can't take things off them, that's emotional abuse and I sure as hell can't hit them (not that I actually would anyway) because, well you know what that is don't you! That's 'discipline' spelt A.B.U.S.E

Some years ago my youngest daughter came home from school and gave me a mouth full of cheek, she was 12 years old. I immediately stopped her and told her to apologise and go to her room, her response was fast and simple, she said, and I quote - "No, I'm leaving home, my teacher said I can"
Naturally I apologised for being so rude and inconsiderate, I punished myself by handing her my wallet and then stood in the corner with my head hung forward, as any good father would.

What I really did was drag her to the school and confront this teacher. I advised said teacher that if he ever told one of my children they could leave home before the ripe old age of 16 again I would shorten his legs dramatically by re-routing them up his arse. I'm not sure how much clearer I could have been.

He apologised and explained that he had simply tried to help her because she had told him she was being abused at home, of course he could tell from my gentle nature that this was not true. My daughter of course was turning all shades of red, partly because she was embarrassed but mostly I suspect because I was strangling her at the time.

My point is that if I can't discipline my kids, and that doesn't mean hitting or strangling them, although the latter has its advantages, then how am I supposed to stop them turning into bad ass pricks who get whatever they want any way they can?
I know such kids grown to be pricks, but pricks who pray on and live off other kids like mine, they should be charged for illegal use of oxygen but they aren't.

I will vote for any politician who will pass a law allowing me to treat these lowlife drug pushing piles of dinosaur droppings the way they should be treated, with a shovel.
These kids / people are the result of parents who either have no guts, don't give a crap about their kids or are bound and gagged by stupid dumb ass laws created to please do gooders raised by hippies and mentally challenged parents.

Yeah sure, I'm a hard ass cranky old fart who doesn't really understand kids or parenting, has no concept of how young people think or live, who should just shut the fcuk up and go back to his retirement village. Well in the words of one Bob Kelso from SCRUBS - 'what has two thumbs and doesn't give a crap?'

My biological kids turned out just fine and they WERE disciplined, they had their moments sure but they turned out good role models and I am proud of them. I see no valid reason why the kids I now have in my care should not be treated with the same discipline and respect, regardless of public opinion. If you don't like that then maybe you should run tell your hippie parents so they can call somebody and have me arrested for trying to raise decent law abiding children. As for you, well in the words of one Bob Kelso from SCRUBS..........

Its Christmas Eve 2008, I should forgive but you know what, those who need it from me can fcuking well ask for it!

Dumb Ass Conversations

2008-12-13T03:21:00.000-08:00

Caller - "I need to speak with Teresa Finley"
Me - "Teresa Finley passed away on October 24th"
Caller - "Well I need to speak with her"
Me - "She died on October 24th, may I help you?"
Caller - "Would you please put her on"
Me - "We cremated her body on November 7, I have her ashes in the bedroom"
Caller - "Could you please go and get her, I need to speak to her"

Now this caller was from a lovely company we have here called Foxtel and they were anxious to speak with Teresa because she had not paid her last bill, which arrived 2 days after she died. I don't have a racial prejudice against anybody but I have to say that this particular caller was most certainly of Indian or Pakistan origin, was obviously not listening or just didn't give a shit. Now perhaps I am being harsh and this man just didn't understand plain English, not his fault right, companies fault for hiring him to deal with English speaking customers, even deceased ones, I mean really, how inconsiderate of my Teresa to up and die knowing full well this gentleman would be calling.

Another one

Caller - "Hello, is Teresa Finley there please"
Me - "I'm afraid Teresa passed away October 24"
Caller - "I'm sorry to hear that, may I speak with her please"
Me - "Teresa Finley is dead, who am I speaking with please?"
Caller - "My name is 'blah' and I am with Dunn and Bradstreet"
Me - "Well as I said Teresa died on October 24 and we..."
Caller - "Well would you please get her and tell her I need to speak with her urgently"
Me - "Are you not listening or are you just plain stupid?"
Caller - "There is no need for insults I just need to speak..."
Me - "Mate, she is dead, that's D.E.A.D, its difficult for me to tell her because she won't answer my calls, now, go away before I say something I will regret"
Caller - "There is no need to be rude, would you please ask her to call me"

Now seriously, this guy was Australian, accent to match and sounded as if he were quite well educated, note I said sounded as if he were. I am growing truly tired of dealing with idiots and morons and I note that the vast majority of them work for or represent large well known companies, I mean Dunn and Bradstreet no less.

Is it just me?
Am I just pissed off because I lost someone dear to me?
Am I being too hard on these poor working class people or are they really this frigging stupid!?!

Nobody listens any more, they just rattle off some crap on a sheet or screen in front of them and they don't give a flying hoot what your response is, as long as they get their quota of people pissed off they are happy, they have done their job.

Who trains these morons?
Who pays them to do this to people?
Who hires them for Gods sake?
How do I get a job like this?
Why can I not send a 300v charge down the frigging phone line at them to make them shut the fuck up and listen. Seriously, if somebody could invent a way to send that charge down the phone line they would be billionaires overnight, I would be the first customer.

Guys come on, a little common sense, a little decency and compassion, a little brain power, a little basic understanding of the language of the people you will be speaking to would go a long long way to easing tensions.

Companies, please grow up and realise that cost cutting in NOT always the best option!

What the hell? Grandma was right!

2007-06-15T02:17:00.000-07:00

Just watched another one of those reports TV Stations run when news is in short supply, you know the ones, school violence, tuck shop nasties, needle rooms etc. This one was about Omega 3 and why we need it, usual stuff really, same old same old from universities and nutritionist’s, but for some reason I decided I had nothing better to do tonight so what the hell.
Turns out that Omega 3 is useful, so is Calcium, Iron, Phosphate, Glutonimaculositiamate and all those other dumb named vitamins and minerals we hear so much about (glutonimaculositiamate isn't real people, I made it up, or at least I think I did, I imagined it had to do with memory, if I remember rightly).

So after watching this report I decided to do some research of my own, partly because I'm getting older now and its starting to show, partly because my wife is keen on healthy lifestyles but mostly because right after the show finished I was back to having nothing better to do. Turns out that all those vitamins and minerals are actually needed by the body and its mechanisms to keep us living things living, stuff like Omega 3 (fish - read Cod liver - oil), Iron (Spinach, Brussell Sprouts, Sherry etc), Calcium (Dairy products, Sardines or any fish with edible bone), Glutonimaculositiamate (plentiful in the rear end produce of any bull).

Here I have been feeding my kids Maccas, Kentucky, Red Rooster and bloody Subway all this time because I figured what the hell would my grandma know, she's a 90 year old woman, what the hell would she know about good healthy food. All this time the old bitch was right, I type this with a steadily increasing headache as that same old bitch beats me about the head with her bloody walking stick, 90 years old, still standing and has never eaten at any of the establishments just mentioned, how is this possible?

People who lived and raised kids through the early parts of the 20th century didn't have the luxury of popping down to Kentucky for a dinner box, they couldn't call out and order home delivery Pizza, they had to make do with what they had on hand or what they grew, and the vast majority did just that.

Sure people died back then from all the diseases we can almost cure now, the health system wasn't what it is today but let me make a bold suggestion, if the health system back then had been as good as it is today, the worlds population would be made up of a lot more elderly people.

They didn't need vitamin supplements, they didn't need hormone injections to build muscle, they didn't need concentrated Cranberry Juice and Power Sauce Bars, they just ate what they had, and what they had was bloody good, I remember my grandmas cooking, oh my god how I miss those Sundays, that food, it was fan-bloody-tastic.

My grandma didn't need Masterfoods BBQ Sauce to make her stuff taste good, it just did, she didn't need tricks to make you eat something, it was good food, and feed you, oh my god you looked at that plate and wondered how the hell you were going to fit it in, but you did.

I grew up through the 50's and 60's, before the onslaught of fast food so I kind of got a good dose of vitamins and minerals from the word go, then I found fast food.

Don't get me wrong, I could have chosen not to eat it but I was no different to anybody else then, time was shorter and fast food was cheap, convenient and didn't taste too bad really. You have to remember that fast food in the early 70's pretty much involved a pie and peas, sausage rolls, sandwiches etc, and coke, can't forget the bottle of coke that kept me going through those long hours between fast foods, sorry, meals.

Over a pretty short period fast food started to become what it is today, the pie became less convenient and the production line burger or deep fried battered chook began to take precedence. So began the decline of the healthy doses of vitamins and minerals, and belt me in the head with a day old Big Mac if we didn't allow our kids to see 'fast food' as an acceptable alternative, even after grandma told us they needed 'real food', what would she know, old fart.

So now we have a generation of young adults who think that as long as they cram a few make believe burgers or some really healthy deep fried chicken (coated in 11 secret herbs and spices no less) into their mouths that they are up to date on vitamins and minerals so they can happily head off to the pub to marinate whats left of any healthy organs in alcohol. Meanwhile every cell in their intoxicated body is fighting an uphill battle against every nasty that finds its way into their world.

So one day they don't feel 100%, they have been watching the telly and seen the ads about multi vitamins and supplements, listened to how we need to top up our diets with this or that product so off they go to the chemist or supermarket (god only knows why you would trust a product that doesn't even rate a chemist) and dutifully buy whatever looks good.

You know, we are to blame for this, not granny, not mum, you and me, we are the ones who got sucked in by the vacuum of the 'fast food train' when it roared past on its way to Profitville Indiana.

I, luckily, quite like certain foods that many people find hard to eat, like Carrots, Onions, Sardines and Brussell Sprouts (no, not together) and Blue Cheese (yum), I have kept up my intake of these items and am happy to report I do not lack Calcium, Iron or Omega 3, I may lack everything else, unless of course pickles and pretend bacon, pretend cheese and yes even pretend bread, contain sufficient levels, which I seriously doubt since any self respecting vitamin or mineral would jump ship at the very thought of being included in today's 'fast food' menus.

I actually tried the vitamin supplement idea and all it did was give me the runs and several weeks of unrelenting pimples in places pimples just have no bloody right to be, so I flushed the remainder.

I guess I am lucky for several reasons, 1. I love cooking, 2. I love eating, 3. I live in Australia and 4. I have time and not a whole lot to do with it.

People, if you don't already do it, get back to real food that you prepare yourself, eat the stuff you have to take time to know, find out about the food you buy and vary your diet. I don't think its fair to say don't eat fast food, just balance it and know that when you do you eat that stuff you will also have to do some work to make sure your cells can handle the enemy. Fast food doesn't always end up on your thighs, most of it ends up surrounding your heart and that isn't where you want it to be, what you see on your thighs is just parked on route.

We need to keep the traffic moving.

Turns out grandma was right.. and she damned well knows it too.
(I gotta get rid of that frigging walking stick)

Space is big, really big

2007-06-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

You wouldn't believe how mind bogglingly big it is, I mean you think it's a long way to the shop on the corner, but I digress. Space is an interesting expanse of nothing that is actually quite well populated with all kinds of wonderful things like galaxies, stars, planets, gases, atoms, neutrons, anti-matter and black holes.

A black hole they tell us is an imploding star that has become so dense that it creates a gravitational pull so strong nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the blackness. They say that everything entering a black hole is compressed to all but nothing and becomes another part of the whole, making the density greater one would imagine and therefore stronger.

Ever come across a black hole? Ever found yourself caught in the gravitational pull of one of these little monsters? No?

Then you have not suffered full blown depression.

Depression, if left untreated, is the black hole of life absorbing everything good that comes near and allowing nothing back out. It will crush the soul into despair and blind the sufferer to any escape, it can be, and has been, deadly.
If you know somebody suffering depression, they need your help now!

Depression, not just a dent

2007-05-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Depression is a bitch, there just is no other way to properly describe this condition, and it is a condition make no mistake, this isn't some dumb little excuse somebody made up to take a week off work, it isn't just some lame excuse made by a dick head who just shot 5 people, this is a serious condition that affects at least 70% of the population at some time in their lives.

Depression can come in many forms, mainly it shows itself in women much more easily than men, with good reason, women are emotional creatures, men are not.

Not all who are depressed show it, many depressed people are wrongly diagnosed because it is a very poorly understood condition, also not all depression is serious, and I say that with caution knowing many people will disagree. This is why many people who suffer with it are never diagnosed, they don't seek help, they self medicate with alcohol, cigarettes, gambling and drugs.

Many who suffer depression will so so in silence for fear of ridicule.

When a woman is depressed the world surrounding her comes to a halt, people change direction and rally around to understand and support her, BUT, when a man is depressed he pretty much gets told to take an Asprin and get over it.

Why?

When a man gets depressed his depression will often be mistaken for 'anger' because men don't know how to handle something they just don't understand. Women as emotional beings understand depression, they understand what it is and why it happens, as long as it happens to another woman.

Men on the other hand have no frigging idea what depression is and they wouldn't show it if they did, because that would be a sign of weakness and god forbid your man should prove to be a weakling. No, a man will get angry because he doesn't know what the hell is happening to him.

Generally speaking men don't cry in public, a man will cry only when he is alone and let me assure you that a man will NOT cry in front of another man (especially a mate), without VERY GOOD REASON!

When a man does cry he most likely will hate himself for it and react by getting angry, usually at something that has little to do with his actual reason for crying, which makes it almost impossible for a woman, or his mates, to understand the problem.

Men in general do not understand depression and therefore find it hard to accept, however, if a woman, especially one who is close, becomes depressed, her man will 'try' to understand, he will 'try' to help, he will 'change his world' to make things better if he can.

A man will do this for the woman he loves 'because he loves her', not because he understands or relates, he just doesn't, all he knows is that something has upset the woman he loves and that just isn't on.
When a man becomes depressed he is seen as a wimp, or worse, 'putting it on'.

If I am depressed and my wife, girlfriend, lover or whatever interprets that as 'anger' then I will become angry over a very short period of time, because 'anger' is NOT the problem, it is a symptom.

How do you tell the difference between plain old 'anger' and 'depression related' anger? It's hard I admit but here's a tip to get you started, depression related anger will, 99% of the time, be totally fragmented, and by that I mean it won't make sense. You see when a man is depressed his brain only allows him to take one track, that track will be directly related to, and most likely the main cause of, his depression.

He will not know this and will definitely not understand it, making his mind wonder off in all directions looking for anything other than the real issue, why? Because 'he' doesn't want to admit he is depressed in the first place.

He can NOT allow himself to be a weakling.
Don't confuse normal anger with depressed anger, that can be very dangerous because real anger, if left unchecked, can become rage, that can lead to a physical outburst and harm. Depressed anger will rarely, if ever, reach that stage because it is fragmented.

'Normal anger' is almost always aimed at a specific target.
'Depressed anger' targets are always picked at random.

A man can't aim his depressed anger at the cause of his depression, that would show his weakness, so he aims at random things, stupid, silly things that make sense only to him, because he is the only one who can see the 'real' target.

Stop and listen, listen to what he is saying, no 'really' listen, just do a quiet search, you will find the 'real' target, it isn't hidden, it isn't locked away or camouflaged, it is in plain sight.

It is the one thing he 'isn't' aiming at.

(A word of caution here, YOU know your man, I don't. Some men when angry become violent and, if your man fits that category, you should not stand and look around, you should get the hell away from him because in such men anger, no matter what the cause, can escalate rapidly and without warning)

A major cause of depression is loneliness, and that doesn't mean being alone.

It means 'feeling alone'.

To eat or not to eat

2007-05-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

Oh... My... God... I just watched yet another report about yet another independent study on food, this one about 'low fat' yogurts and other 'sugar free' things actually having 'more' of the crap than the normal stuff. Here we are taking note of our doctors warnings about heart and blood pressure, lungs and tobacco, bones and calcium, cholesterol, mercury levels, low vitamin levels, healthy eating and all this other bullshit that they keep right on throwing at us and then we get told the tasteless crap we are now eating because it is 'low fat', 'sugar free' and 'better for us' is worse than the crap we used to eat -

AND ENJOYED DAMN IT!

God damn it I like bacon, I like eggs, I like porridge and corn flakes, I love raw fish, I adore thinly sliced raw beef (go French) and hell I would kill right now for a decent Lambs rib cage, fat and all! But can I eat these things? well no, not if I want to live to a ripe old age anyway, according to health fanatics, doctors, vegetarians and my wife. Now look, I can understand my wifes concern, she wants me to be around longer, it is good for her that I am, but none of these other people actually give a rats arse if I live or die, most of em don't even know me and lets face it, the longer I am around the more I end up costing everybody.

What this is all about is money.

Health Insurance companies, and the government, 'want' you to eat healthy but won't subsidise the extra costs of doing so, they want you to do gym every second day, but all they will give you is a shitty discount (if you are with the right insurer) on shoes or gym gear. Organic food (healthy yes?) is more expensive than crap (just like recycled paper) and trying to grow your own if you live in an apartment, flat, semi or even a small house, is next to impossible.

Big supermarket chains and multinational conglomerates drive out the small shopkeeper, the greengrocer, the fruit market so all we are left with is 'fresh' food that was fresh sometime maybe, just not this week.

We eat processed food in many forms, we can't avoid it in most cases and they know it, so they start packaging stuff with fancy words that mean absolutely nothing, then, when somebody looks into them, an 'independent study', they re-package, re-label, re-name or whatever they need to do to keep us buying and consuming.

Lets face it even that Heart Foundation Tick (or whatever they use where you live) means next to nothing, sure they check stuff, just like drug tests in sport, they catch one or two, make a big deal out of it but overall shit happens you know. You can't blame these places for taking the money and giving the tick or whatever they give, its business and the money they raise is used to help the people who get sick from eating unhealthly food.

They try, they do the best they can but really you can't hold them to ransom over it, after all if you listen to every report about every thing then you know you shouldn't eat, drink, smoke, drive, swim, travel, have sex, 'not' have sex, have fun, breathe - oh hell everythings going to kill you, its just a matter of when and if you want to die happy or sad.

Question; when was the last time you actually saw a fresh potato?

Today I went to Woolworth's, the 'Fresh Food People', and bought what appeared to be good brushed potatoes, didn't pay too much for them, they looked good. Got home, started peeling them and guess what, out of 15 potatoes I found 6 that were not either bad, rotted inside or had severe bruising that went right through and destoryed any hope of decent presentation, even as chips.

Can't take em back because they have been peeled, wouldn't matter anyway because they would just give me another bunch with the same problems.

I used to pick potatoes, you know back when they offered hitch hikers jobs on potato farms, and I know a thing or two about these tubors. They don't rot in the ground unless they are just left too wet and not picked or drained. They do however rot if they are frozen or rapidly cooled and then left to thaw overnight (noticed how cold the potatoes are in the supermarket?). They don't get bruised when hand picked, they get bruised when 'handled', by that I mean mechanically processed by huge bloody machines that don't give a hoot in hell about the actual product, just the diesel.

I like my food, one of the few pleasures in life that almost everybody can enjoy just happens to be one of those things we are required to do to live. Sadly, big companies and their bank accounts know this so we are essentially screwed. With that in mind I have decided that the enjoyment of food will be a priority in what remains of my life and, to be honest, I don't care much if some person in some office somewhere in Switzerland says its healthy or not (no doubt jamming the remains of a Big Mac down their throat as they type).

I like food, I like how it tastes, I like how it burns, I like how it makes me feel and I just don't care if its going to put a layer of cholesterol on the inner walls of my veins, or make my skin dry (already leather anyway), or make my pants no longer stretch around my waist. If it kills me then I will die knowing that I enjoyed living and didn't die of stress worrying how much fat was in my bloody yogurt.
My final word?

Yum Cha forever!

Now is the time

2007-05-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

I spent 2 hours of today sitting on a seat that gave me a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Circular Quay with all its hustle and bustle. I sat, took short sips of my coca cola, little nibbles of my wrap and just watched people as they meandered about the place, people in a hurry to get some place, people in no particular hurry to get any place, people with no place to go.
It always amuses me to see the way people in a hurry almost always find people in no hurry directly in their path, so they veer slightly one way or the other and bump right into people with no place to go.

In most cases those in the hurry are slowed down and don't look happy about it, those in no hurry are generally oblivious to the looks and those with no place to go don't care. All in all it makes for very entertaining viewing on a dull day.

Today I watched a pick pocket work her magic on at least 10 unsuspecting people, she was very good at it too and I noted she only targeted people who looked like they could afford to lose a buck or two, and tourists. When she realised that I had been watching her she left, but not before I gave her a smile that will probably worry her for some time.

I was also within sight of one of those artists who paint themselves and stand totally still for a living, now while I will never understand why anybody would do such a thing I do have to admire the fact that they can stand there without losing their cool, even under circumstances that would make any normal person find the nearest pole.

This artist today, a man in his late 20's I suspect, stood perfectly still, well as perfectly still as you can while still breathing, as people either ignored him, dropped money in his hat, had photo's taken with him (while being pick pocketed), poked fun at him or just plain ridiculed him. Now through all this he remained still, the only things moving were his looser clothing in the breeze and his eyes.

If only people would take the time to watch other peoples eyes, they would learn so much. These eyes today displayed the full range of emotion, gratitude, pleasure, sadness and sometimes (although it appears it was obvious only to me), if those eyes were lasers.......

It didn't seem to matter much to him that not many people were actually dropping money, well not a lot of money anyway, into his hat and this was most likely because he knew the pick pocket. They never communicated verbally, well of course he couldn't, but now and again the eyes met.

A busker sat not too far away from me, he was playing guitar, quite well actually, he obviously knew his trade because he was playing mostly chords that have a calming effect on people. Passers by were indeed slowing down, even the ones in big hurries to get nowhere, but not many were dropping money.

I noticed that he had a back pack and every so often he would fiddle with something inside it then twiddle a few knobs on his guitar before adjusting his headset. The interesting thing here is the headset because he didn't have an amplifier, he was playing acoustic.

A little later I noticed a police car drive by, I had noticed this same car several times and it always seemed to appear at the same time as the busker fiddled with knobs and back packs.

An older homeless guy came along, doing what these guys do you know, looking in garbage bins, trying to grab morsels of food any way they can. The pick pocket walked past him and suddenly he had a $20 note in his hand, happy guy.

Pick pocket walked past the busker on her escape route, kicked his guitar case and gave him the filthiest look, I had a hard time not laughing out loud. The busker did nothing, he just put the guitar case back where it should be and kept busking.

You know you sit there at my age and you watch people, nobody takes much notice of you really, unless you somehow engage their attention as I did the pick pocket, but despite the fun you can have watching the tricky side of life there is also the real side, the sad and lonely side. There was a young woman, attractive, well dressed and obviously waiting for somebody who never turned up. She stood proud there at the rail with her back to the water, breeze flicking her long dark hair around.

Everything about her said confidence, except her eyes. She had been stood up and she was hurting, no tears, no tell tale movements of the chest to show she was crying inside, but those eyes, so deep and so alone.

Then there was the old man sitting quietly flicking bits of bread to seagulls, minding his own business and every so often glancing down at some small photos he had on the seat. I couldn't see the photos but I'll bet my life they were of somebody close that he lost. His eyes, old as they were, could not hide or disguise the pain and sadness as he fed those damned birds.

A little further along was the mother trying to handle 3 small children and 1 stroller, not the easiest thing to do at home, let alone on a crowded Quay. One of the kids had dropped her ice cream and that was a disaster of biblical proportions in her tiny world, nothing else mattered and mum should know this and deal with that fact quickly. Meanwhile little Johnny decided this was the perfect time to become stroppy and the stroller erupted into wailing sounds for no apparent reason.

Dad came back and, god love him, just couldn't understand what the commotion was all about. Again I looked at the eyes of this patient, loving, understanding woman, I saw, in a single glance, an atomic bomb armed and defused, a war started and stopped, the fate of a man considered and the love of a woman who simply smiled.

I saw hundreds of people walk by me today, many of them deliberately shutting out the world around them, not interested in communication, not looking for contact, and yet all in a hurry to get somewhere filled with other people who can't wait to get away. Everybody has a reason to be where they are at any given moment in time, likewise everybody has to be somewhere else soon and as such we tend to be constantly on the move.

The old saying 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' fits well here, but often -
it is the moss that we need.

A man once said to his wife, "I can do it when I come back", then he rode away on his bicycle. Less than 20 minutes later she opened the door to find 2 police officers, hats in hand.

The time is now, it may not be there again.
There will always be lonely people in a crowd, unless somebody says hello.

Endangered species

2007-05-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a man on a bicycle get hit by a car, I watched as people started to gather around, doing nothing much other than push and shove, acting on some primal instinct to get a better view of the injured man.

The scene reminded me of a day not that long ago when I witnessed another accident, an elderly man, also on a bicycle, hit by one of those small 4WD's that people seem to love so much these days. On this day two security guards and one off duty police officer also saw the accident.

The off duty cop disappeared, apparently he didn't want to get involved. The two security guards, both of whom are required by law to have first aid training, did nothing, absolutely nothing to help this injured man. The driver of the car, a very distraught young mother (with 2 small kids in the car) was trying desperately to help the man she had just hit.

As I moved towards the scene I called emergency and had both ambulance and police on the way. The man was about 70, his head was split and he was bleeding badly, this poor woman, already a mess because she hit him, was covered in the mans blood. Standing around her were 5 men and 3 women, including the security guards, not one of them was trying to help her.

One woman and two men were on mobile phones but they were not calling emergency, they were telling whoever was on the other end of their conversations what they were looking at. Oh they looked suitably concerned as they described in detail what they were looking at, but that's all they did.

Why??

When the ambulance arrived they treated both the man and the woman (driver), the man was dying, that was obvious, his blood had drenched my coat despite all my efforts to stop the flow (I also have first aid experience), he had lost litres before the ambulance even arrived. They tried to treat him but he died at the scene.

Another ambulance had arrived and the woman driver was being treated for shock, meanwhile I was searching the growing crowd for faces. By the time the police arrived only 3 people who had actually witnessed the accident,, including me, were left at the scene.

All the others, including the security guards, were gone. Unfortunately for those 2 security guards I had taken note of their license details and passed them on to police (they had a duty of care and they failed - twice), I also named the off duty cop (I recognised him).

That poor woman had hit a cyclist (not her fault), she was distraught, had small children in her car crying and a dying man bleeding all over her. She looked desperately for help from those around her but found none, nobody wanted to get involved, I guess they needed to get home. By the time I got to her she was a real mess, she was bawling and shaking uncontrollably, her chest and legs were drenched in blood and was instinctively holding her hands on the split trying to stop the blood.

This poor woman had no medical training whatsoever, she just wanted the last 3 minutes back. I had to force her to let me take over, once I did 'then' one of the women watching came to help.

That poor woman covered in blood will have to live with that day for the rest of her life, I seriously doubt she will ever fully recover from this experience.

Would the man have lived if others had helped? No, of that there is no doubt, but is that a good enough reason to walk away? is that a reason to ignore pain and suffering? reason to be cold?

I knew he was dying, he knew he was dying, his eyes showed me that, but I still tried to make him comfortable, I tried to give him the best chance possible, he died knowing at least two people cared.

If that had been your father, your husband, your brother, your friend, wouldn't you like to believe that at least 'somebody gave a damn about him', 'somebody cared'? It seems these days we don't .

'Caring' and 'Compassion' are endangered species.

Busy work

2007-05-11T04:28:00.000-07:00

What I love about Parliament is that it gives a whole pile of otherwise feral chimpanzees something to do with their time.

Attitudes and dickheads

2007-04-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

"Hell, we own Iraq and we're still paying through the ass for fuel"
That quote from an American 'Humvee' owner regarding petrol prices in the US.

It takes just one single comment like that, aired across the globe by the media to unravel all the hype and spin that has rolled from the mouths of politicians world wide. I am not a big supporter of the war in Iraq, hell I don't think anybody has the right to invade a foreign country without either provocation or valid cause, neither of those were ever shown before Bush marched.

That dumb Humvee owner may be the only person in America who feels that way BUT, his comments went out to the whole TV watching world and displayed an attitude the rest of the world actually believes most Americans have, in fact it strengthened that belief.
It really doesn't matter now how much 'good' hype is put to air because it is a fact that people remember, and talk about, the 'bad' more than the good.

Did you know that if you have a 'good' experience at a restaurant (good food or service), you might tell 3 people about it, but, if you have a 'bad' experience you are likely to tell 10.

Think before you go making statements and comments, especially to media, engage brain.

This post is a good example of this trend, have I mentioned anything 'good' about either the Humvee owner, his country, the war or even the damned Humvee? No!
Am I going to?
No!

They drive that way too

2007-04-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

You know the ones, walk down any street, into any shopping mall, supermarket isle etc, and you will find them, those annoying people who walk criss cross in front of you, stand and chat at the entrance to an isle, stand on the end of a pedestrian crossing talking, holding the lift doors open to chat with the next door neighbour. Then there are those ignorant dicks who barge on through everything and everybody to get what they want, leave the trolly exactly where it will block the most access or decide, at the checkout, that they forgot something and, in the middle of the transaction, will walk off to get it.

As you watch these people you just 'know' they drive with the same care and consideration.

My wife assures me these people are simply in 'shopping mode' and I should try to ignore them. Well maybe she is right, she almost always is, but ignorance is hard to ignore, as is the urge I have to insert the closest can of anything into the anal region of such people.

Before you ask, no I do not suffer road rage, well not really, well not often, no more than twice a day anyway, maybe three, you shouldn't be ask ..... you wanna step outside or what!!

Sorry

Teachers - every one of us.

2007-04-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hands up those of you who think stupidity is inherited?
Well, you lose, stupidity is taught, not passed down in the genes
(The poor souls born with actual disabilities are not stupid, just damned unlucky).

We learn by our senses from day one, that's why we need role models in our lives and for most of us those role models are our parents:
Note - I did say most of us.

Nobody is 'born' a parent, it isn't something you inherit, you can't take a tablet to become one or have parenting skills surgically implanted, parenting is something you learn on the run.

Most of the time we get it right but sometimes we stuff up, probably don't even realise we are doing it - but repeat it often enough for it to become 'learned behaviour' in our children. Unfortunately parents are not the only role models our children have and parents are certainly 'not' the only teachers they have, everybody is a teacher and now, having set the scene.

Driving through Sydney's Inner West the other day, heavy traffic, school day. Approaching a school where a fully marked crossing offers safety for pedestrians, especially children. Coming towards me is a woman, about 30, dragging a 6 year old daughter by the hand. She is obviously in a hurry and the kid must get to school. They are 20 feet away from the crossing. The woman drags the helpless 6 year old across a busy road between moving cars because the marked (and safe) crossing was just too far away. Coming behind me was a Mercedes driven by a man who, it became clear later, believed road rules only applied to others, not Merc drivers. The Merc went around me and suddenly hit the brakes coming to a screaching halt centimetres from the child.
The woman starts abusing the living hell out of the driver, she lets go of the daughters hand and starts making all kinds of hand and arm gestures at the driver, meanwhile the 6 year old daughter, now knowing it is ok to run into moving traffic, because mum just did it, heads off towards school.
A man jumps from his car and grabs her just before she stepped out from between his door and an oncoming bus, he saved her life, but guess what mum did. The sad thing here is what this innocent 6 year old learned that day, luckily nobody was physically injured, no physical damage was done to any person or property but that girl learned how to do the wrong thing and blame everybody else for it. What do you suppose would happen if that girl, one day down the track, walks or runs out into traffic and gets killed, who do you suppose will be blamed? It won't be the mother I'll guarantee.

Think about this, that childs father probably has no idea she is being taught this stuff, her mother is, without even thinking about it, teaching her child that it is ok to break the rules if you are in a hurry. She is teaching her own daughter to blame everybody else when something goes wrong, that anger solves problems and that car drivers 'must' stop for you. Why? Because she is in a hurry.

People please, PLEASE have some sense, especially when it comes to children, no matter how much of a hurry you are in, it will wait.

By law I am not allowed to grab a stupid parent who just dragged a 6 year old across a busy road full of moving traffic and repeatedly bang their head against the pole holding the flashing 'walk/don't walk' sign while telling the child that the parent is undergoing 'repeat after me' therapy, that would be assault right? .............
but hell - that's what I really want to do!

13 things I really hate

2007-04-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

1. The pedestrian who drags a helpless 6 year old across a busy road between moving cars because the marked (and safe) crossing was 10 steps away!
2. The dick who owns the Cross Bred Bull Terrier and doesn't accept that it could possibly be dangerous, even after it attacked his own kid.
3. The Mercedes driver who doesn't have to obey the same road rules as the rest of us.
4. The pushbike rider who doesn't follow any rules at all, thinks red lights mean Brothel and believes he/she has right of way regardless.
5. The young guys, yes I am now getting gender specific, out there who decide that the road is by far the very best place to practice kicking a football, or playing cricket, golf or, and I kid you not, casting a line (complete with sinkers and hook, there is one in my street).
6. The driver who doesn't feel the need to indicate when changing lanes or moving out from the kerb, and doesn't actually know what mirrors are for.
7. The moron who, although knowing full well what mirrors are for, doesn't feel the need to check them before throwing the car door open into traffic.
8. The motorcycle rider who just 'has to' get to the front of the traffic, even if that means riding between moving cars (and yes I am a rider).
10. That other moron who owns the damned dog that barks when a butterfly lands on Mars and just won't shut up because it's owner doesn't care, doesn't hear it, doesn't train it or is just plain stupid.
11. Shaver ad's showing a 'clean shaven' man, on whom a single whisker would look decidedly out of place, shaving in a single stroke with complete disregard for safety or the fact that 'real' men want to jam that razor where it hurts.
12. Cleaning fluid ad's that have some woman squirt the smallest dob of fluid on a dirty surface then wipe with a huge cloth showing an area (where no fluid ever went), the size of Africa cleaned.
13. Lists.

Mute - a wonderful button.

2007-04-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

You're watching TV, program isn't bad but the volume is a tad low, that's no problem you just turn up the surround sound a bit and keep watching. Ad break comes along and suddenly you are propelled backwards over your seat by the shockwave from your surround sound speakers as that pretty young thing on the TV opens her mouth to tell you about the product she holds. Who knew this attractive, sexy girl had a 5000 watt microphone surgically implanted at the back of her throat, but hey, she was advertising a breakthrough in hearing aids so all you need to do is pick up the phone.

No point calling the TV station and complaining though, they will just tell you that the people who make the ads make them at higher volume. Doesn't seem to sink in to the TV people that if they 'know' that then maybe they could do a public service and adjust the outgoing signal just a tad. As for those people who make the ads, they don't seem to realize that making your audience adjust volume levels and/or leave the room when their ad comes on probably isn't the preferred response the client is looking for.

Me, I just hit the 'Mute' button and go put the kettle on, feed the cat, paint the garage, service the car, make the beds, beat a 'stupid' parents head against a pole, then when I get back the ad's are finished, well for about 38 seconds anyway, then I get to go back to the parent and the pole (the 6 year old took over while I was away, they learn fast).

Dual Citizenship

2007-04-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

We apparently have Australian born women who, just because they fell in love and married US servicemen during WWII, are no longer considered citizens of this fine country, hold the bus!
Is that not like saying to your son or daughter "if you go to live at that address you are no longer my son or daughter" or "you are no longer welcome in this home", well excuse me Mr Prime Minister but speak for yourself, not for me.

If you have a birth certificate that shows you were born in Australia, then I don't give two hoots in hell what color you are, what religion you are, what sexual preference you have, how rich or poor you may be, who you marry or where the hell you choose to live, you are, and always will be, "Australian".

Ok, so these women had to make a choice, to marry a US man and live in the US they had to become US citizens, hell Howard, my daughter took on her husbands family name and went to live with him, that doesn't mean she doesn't consider me her father anymore, it doesn't mean she doesn't have a bed here any time she needs it, it doesn't mean I'll turn my back on her if she gets into trouble, becomes ill, has financial troubles, for god's sake she is still my daughter and part of this family.
She didn't turn her back on her family, she fell in love.

Hey Mr Howard, when our daughters get married, we should throw their asses out quick smart, strike them from our will, rip up that birth certificate, honestly, how dare they give up the family name, love another and move out of home after all we have done for them?

So much for family values John.
It's about time this country, and it's governments, grew up.