Who the hell are you? Eh, whatever.
Today, there are local council elections around my state. I must admit that I am utterly ignorant and mostly apathetic about the outcome.

Strangely for a country of only 19 million people, Australia has three levels of government - Federal, State, and Local. The fuzzy picture in my mind says that the Federal ( Read more... )

I've been getting an increasing number of phone calls from telemarketers lately, and have taken to screening calls just about all the time at home. Harder to avoid are phone calls to my mobile, or even more rudely, to my work number ( Read more... )

OK, I expected today to be a crap lesson. I had a big scare last week, and much as you might exhort me to "forget about it" (and much as I might try not to think about it), it's sitting there in the back of my head.

Obviously I'm learning to drive, so it's par for the course for you to micro-manage my driving and remind me when I've done things ( Read more... )

I have a fluey coldy thing, and as I left the house this morning, I discovered that we were out of cold and flu tablets*. Shit. Knowing that there was little point going to work today without something to stave off the runny nose, sinus pain and general brain fog, I stopped at the chemist next to station. In the general hysteria surrounding ( Read more... )

I was out west today, and it was my intention to get the train back towards the city. My heart sank when the train stopped at Parramatta with the announcement "The train will be stopped here for some time due to an earlier incident on the Lidcombe bridge." Holy crap, CityRail never say "for some time" - it's always "briefly" or "until the signal ( Read more... )

Yesterday, I went to a birthday BBQ held by Peter, one of my friends from church. The food was excellent, the company was lovely, and the entertainment was provided by Joshua, a 16-month-old who started seriously walking in the last couple of days.* Much of the afternoon passed with the group of us sitting around Peter’s lounge room, holding out ( Read more... )

In the last few months, I have sadly had cause to buy a number of condolence cards. Each time, it takes me forever to pick one, because so many condolence cards are so very unsatisfactory.

For example:

• If it contains reference to "you will be comforted by your happy memories", it's out. When you're sending a card to a person who's just lost ( Read more... )

About 10 minutes ago, our intercom rang. There was a woman on the other end, and she said "I'm from the electricity company, and I need to speak to you. Can you come outside? I'm near the letterboxes." I was a bit confused at what this could be about, but the sound from the intercom is pretty dodgy, and it's difficult to work out what's going ( Read more... )

Dear local radio station,

I have noticed you playing the Cake song, "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" quite frequently of late. My estimate would be about twice a day. I have no objection to you playing songs by Cake - I like Cake, I have all their albums - but I'm a bit perplexed by your fixation with this one song, particularly when there are much ( Read more... )

I was rapt when I discovered that iTunes music store was now available to the Australian populace. I thought they were the answer to all the gripes I griped about here. I dutifully downloaded the massive program (with mandatory Quicktime) and started combing through the music store. I was surprised that a fair few of the artists I wanted to buy ( Read more... )