Yes it takes that long. No we can't do it ourselves.

My personal hero Kath quit her job this week.

In an unrelated story, at my own workplace, I was arranging to send some students some important letters. Instead of using modern technology to print the letters and send them, we are now required to send them to another department whose responsibility it is to change the font and re-format the letters before they are sent out so that the letters have a different font and are reformatted. No other changes are made, nor required.

Please refrain at this point from pointing out any inefficiencies in this process.

Three days later, I received the letters back before they were sent to the in-house printers instead of being printed by the printer next to my desk.

When I sent the letters, the first line read

"This is to certify that John Smith of 10 Jones St, Smythtown has done a course ..."

When I received the letters back, the first line read

"This is to certify that John Smith, 10 Jones St, Smythtown has done a course ..."

Did you spot the difference?
I did.
I wrote back:

"Looks like somehow the font-changing process has removed a word, changing the meaning of the letter from a statement confirming that a person residing at an address has done a course into a statement meaning that somehow a person, a street address and a suburb have all somehow done a course.
Obviously a grievous error has occurred.
Please change it back as these letters are only for specific people and not entire streets or suburbs for that matter."

The reply came within the minute:

"I made the decision to remove the “of” as it does not not read correctly. "

See what you're missing, Kath?

Combine the two and "Jingle Bells" takes on new meaning

The League has new staff cars!

They're like those car testicles, yet somehow even more brainless. Although maybe not in the country where "Red Hot Summer Deals" are advertised on deep orange backgrounds with un-melted snowflakes drifting around.

Rule #75

If you are not sure if you've called the right number, then you haven't.

Rule #75.b
If the reason for your call takes longer than 10 second to explain, you are a wombat-faced buffoon with no cognitive filter between brain-stem and mouth.
Remember to water yourself periodically.

No one reads this either

Major scandal: At last week's state election, a Labor politician got in trouble because some volunteers were handing out How To Vote cards at polling booths upon which were written something like:

Put Your
FAMILY FIRST

• Blah
• Blah
• Blah

Authorised by Labor party candidate, Michael Blogs.

And everyone is up in arms and legs. Can I get this straight, please?
Yes, they didn't have red t-shirts on, like Labor party commies, but light blue ones like Straighty One-Eighty Family First bible-bashers.
Yes, the card did say 'Family First' on it, quite prominently. But who are we protecting here?
People who can't read?
In that case, how could our disenfranchised and duped illiterate brothers and sisters read anything on the card? Let alone the crucial words "Family First"?
So the people who are getting duped by these dodgy How To Votes, can read? Is that right? What's the problem then?
Oh. They don't want to read. Not too much anyway. Just enough to get that time-wasting, three-yearly chore out of the way without feeling like someone's going to force them to hold hands with a homosexual person.
Democracy: in, out, back to three more years of reading the sports section first and recycling everything else (you know, the sections where the people in ties don't have backdrops stippled in sponsors' logos). Let me put it another way: did you know that literally millions of people get killed fighting for dreaming about the possibility of having the opportunity to get handed a How To Vote card?

One that doesn't look like this.

And you're moaning because some prankster handed you a fakey and you didn't read it properly and wasted your vote? If you care enough to complain about voting for the wrong guy and looking stupid, then it follows that you would probably care enough about the whole process to take more of an interest and actually read what's put under your nose to, you know, avoid looking stupid.
But I'm obviously wrong there.

Pardon my pedantry but ...

Shouldn't it technically be DON'TabortSA.com?
I mean, far be it from me to help out some already-beyond-help, right wing, lip-twiddlin', cousin-fiddlin' nut jobs, but if they are against abortion, shouldn't they effectively avoid a party name that directly suggests that they are in favour of RU-486ing the entire state?

Entrepreneur Man Strikes!

I'm selling 2 tickets to Kangaroo Island and a TV.
Tell me you've seen a better non-Chuck Norris-related eBay listing and I still won't believe you.

Tell me you've seen a wackier question for an eBay seller and I'd love to see it. I really did get asked this, just scroll down the bottom of the listing:

"where is Kangaroo island?"

Actually, I can even tell you about it a wackier question. Actually, it was more of a conversation. I was telling someone about selling these tickets to Kangaroo Island, and the wacky questions I get about it (another was "Does this trip depart from melbourne, or another city/state?"). I went on to intimate that although I would mock these individuals in private (er, and on a non-linked blog), for having access to the internet, and yet being unaware of it's knowledge gathering capabilities, I actually went and visited Wikipedia and SeaLink online to confirm my sources (as far as that is possible). In visiting Wikipedia's entry on Kangaroo Island, I discovered that it is Australia's third largest island, behind Tasmania and a place called Melville Island in the Northern Territory. I relayed this to my audience, to which they responded:

X-: Well it is the largest island in Australia.
Me: Actually, third largest!
X-: What's the first?
Me: Tasmania.
X-: That's not an island, it's a state.
Me: Is it surrounded by water?
X-: Yeah.
Me: It's an island.
X-: It's a state.
Me: A state and an island are two different things.
X-: Whatever you say!

This was a real conversation.

Obviously I am seriously mistaken.

I always thought the point of being in politics was to get more people to vote for you, not less.

Let's punch out some polls!

Update: And a little Tony Abbott quote for all the lady voters out there:

"We have a bizarre double standard, a bizarre double standard in this country where someone who kills a pregnant woman's baby is guilty of murder but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice."

I think we have the Liberal Party's 2010 election slogan!

And speaking of which

I promised myself that I wouldn't post about work, but some things are just too, too sweet. For clarity, I work in a university department which helps students with learning techniques like essay writing, referencing, research and time management. I returned today to a message on my answering machine from a student:

"Hello. Can you tell me how to use Endnote?* Oh, but how are you going to call me back? Hmm. This is a perplexing concept ..."
*hangs up*

Me (to answering machine message): "Madam, if the concept of the telephone is beyond your ken, then you haven't a hope with Endnote."


*bibliography software

Get it while it's incredibly stupid

I know editors are being downsized in the mainstream media, but I didn't realise that it actually meant hiring 7-year-olds.
Read the tag-line for this video, before someone changes it.

Minimal posts due to completely exciting hospital trip this weekend! We're all better now!

Dissatisfaction

trying to pick up a heavy bag which sitting on its own strap
sinking into the couch only to realise that the controller is over ..................................there
boring
ad
ad
ad
subtitles are too fuzzy
this coffee is burnt
so's the milk
three precious hours in which to study, half an hour reading internet comics, half an hour installing some bloody update
sunnies aren't dirty, that's a scratch
headphone cord gets caught and pulls at my ears
all this poetry is pretty much unreadably tedious
shin + bedpost
either no one's listening to me or I'm talking across the top of everyone
the more comfortable the pillow, the more likely it is to be bin night
the unblogworthy drollery of the suburban 9 to 5
blowfly + oriface
i'm just trying to eat my lunch and read my book I'm not really interested in donating five minutes of that to chit-chat
why won't Australian Top Gear read my blogs and hire me as a writer

You should be thanking them!

And in the Channel Nine news this morning: Channel Nine show Hey Hey It's Saturday offends with a racist sketch on eternal Aussie favourite, Red Faces.

Cut to extended clip of five podgy white guys in afro wigs in blackface dancing and miming to a Jackson Five song. Stern commentary by our morning news reader informing us that these men had painted their faces black. More blackface dancing. They're mostly in sync.
Enter another white man, dressed as Michael Jackson circa HIStory, with his face painted white. (get it?!) More stern commentary pointing out that the newest member of the Jackson Six has his face painted white.
Cut to Red Faces celebrity judge (white) American, Harry Connick Jr, looking dumbfounded and drawing a shaky zero on his scorecard.
'If you had done that in the US,' pronounces the singer 'It'd be "Hey Hey Show's Over" - off the air.'
Cut to chubby little Daryl formally apologising to Connick Jr for offending him (no one else, just him), in that semi-fake TV apology tone where light-entertainment types have to eat humble pie and pull it off with all the sincerity of a group email.
Connick Jr says that he wouldn't have come on the show if he knew that Grown Up Golliwogs were going to be part of the deal.

Guess he underestimated the moronic desperation of insulated aging white guys ...
The man who played Michael Jackson now reckons that he wasn't being racist, because he's a) Indian (and of course no Indians are capable of racism because they get racismed themselves!), b) a doctor (and doctors are immune to racist behaviour, just like parking tickets) and c) don't forget, he was just trying to be funny! (Oh I get it ...)
When asked if he would perform the skit in the US? "Absolutely not."
Because racism is only okay when its subjects can't lynch you. And because no Australian Aboriginals (or anyone else who thinks that they're "black") should be offended because they should know that they were being Americans.
Not Australians - Americans. See? It's different.
No Aboriginals have the right to be offended and no way do they get an apology.
Only the white American guy gets an apology.
And noneof those black Americans get an apology either, because they didn't see it and didn't complain at the time.
And anyway, what has a bunch of wealthy doctors from "different racial backgrounds" painted in black face got to do with a couple of centuries of racism that's been over for decades?

And remember: they were just trying to be funny!

Franzy fights on

And here's what I wrote in the (surprisingly ample) feedback section of the Greater Union customer survey after buying some online tickets:

"You cinemas need to start being up front about why allocated seating has been introduced. No contacts know. The staff shrug and smile and take your wad of cash. It inconveniences patrons and restricts the enjoyment of my movie-going experience to be sat next to a stranger and not be able to choose the location of my seat upon entering the cinema.
Sharing elbow room with someone I've never met was never on my list of Things To Do At The Movies.
Why the gritted-teeth is it on there now?
To phase out ticketing staff and ease us into online bookings and buy-your-ticket-here pillars? You're competing with 50" plasmas and surround-sound in people's homes! The only thing you've GOT over that is customer service. I've had friends who now avoid going to the cinemas now because of allocated seating. My mother gave up her 10-year membership to Palace Nova on the back of this short-sightedness. She wrote them a long letter to explain why. Customer service? She didn't even receive a reply. You try telling me that you're a different company who listens to the concerns of its patrons? Rubbish. To theatre-goers, you are now all one and the one same. Brand loyalty is dead dead dead.
Don't give me that bluster about Gold seating, either. $35 for the chance at a hot nachos in the second reel is NOT a fun family outing. OR a low-pressure date. The cinema used to be the place where teenagers could meet up and not have to make awkward conversation. Now you've priced them right out of the market. Wake up.
If you don't want customers, just shut down now with dignity and stop taking everyone's money and enjoyment with you."

You may thank me in the comments when allocated seating is abolished and a quiet young man with a side-part and a small torch is guiding you to your $5 seat.

That's why, darling, it's incredible!

Examine the following newspaper ad:



Touching, no? We all know lots of "unforgettable" women. We're all interested, yeah? Yeah. Well what is this ad imploring us to do with the thought of our own unforgettable woman?
How about I let you in on the second half of the ad. Read on.



Perhaps "forgettable" ain't the word we should be using around Alzheimer's sufferers, eh?
Do you know an unforgettable woman?
I don't fucking know! They're all fucking forgettable when you've got Alzheimer's! I'd thank you for reminding me, if that weren't one of the number one fucking symptoms! Thanks, Adelaide Review! Now what's happening in local theatre?!

***
GTH - ThirdCat for tutting me on my own blog. Bully for you.

Blood oranges

Three more idiots are dead. Does it fix anything? Does it make us better people? Does it allow us all learn as humans from our mistakes and live happier lives?
Nope.
Now 205 people are dead as a result of the 2002 Bali bombings. That's it.

"There is an unwanted chapter in my life that begins with violence and closes with violence. There is a sense of emptiness."

Brian Deegan, father of Josh Deegan who was killed in the attack.

***

GTH - To Shippy for the tooth-rotting metaphor and a grudging tick to 327 for nerding up in the old nerd box. The picture was of course meant to reference both the literal poor dental care resultant from a 'user pays' society and the metaphor of dealing with both HECS, Centrelink and self people folk what don't get the value of an educated community: eating shit.