Population Density

Realty Reality

{ 5:42 PM, Saturday 24 February 2007 }

My quest for a new apartment continues and I have currently wasted my whole Saturday morning. In fact, I'm so annoyed I can really understand why some people open fire in Real Estate offices. It is tragic, yes, but, hey - you gotta watch those Real Estate Agents - they will screw you over.

For example, today I called to make apointments to see three apartments. Two were "pretty much gone" according to the woman on the desk (although why they were still being advertised on the Internet AND in-store, I will never know), so I said I would be there in 30 minutes to pick up the keys for the last one. Some idiot had closed down the bridge I was taking across the river, so I got there 60 minutes later and was told I could still get the keys, but had to have them back in 25 minutes, rather than the normal hour as someone else had them booked at 11am. Fair enough, as I was late. So I forked out $50 for the deposit and took the keys.

I returned to the office 25 minutes later, convinced that I would make a terrible thief, seeing as I couldn't get into the apartment, even though I had a set of keys. Freaking door. Still, on arriving back at the real estate office I noticed on my receipt that I had been given the keys for a different apartment, not the one I requested. The other girl behind the desk would have been quite happy to give me the right keys, until I informed her that someone else had them booked at 11am.

Pissed off and exhausted from sprinting down the main street to get the keys back on time, I marched out the door. I found several other real estate offices in the same street, all of which found various ways of not getting my business. One even had a giant sign that said "No rentals currently available". Bastards.

Car Spam

{ 7:31 PM, Thursday 22 February 2007 }

I've recently started parking in a new carpark at work - a slight upgrade from the dustbowl that I used to park in, but only just. The last two days I've parked there I have returned to my car 8 hours later to find a flyer attached to the windscreen and, on the second day, an advertisement stuck to my driver's side window with a suction cap.

I find it insulting that I never got spam when I was in the dodgy car park and yet now I do. I am also insulted that the second ad (the suction capped one) was placed on my car, but not the flashier one beside me. It was an ad for car insurance - obviously the flashy car didn't require this, it must be accepted that anyone who drives a sports 4WD is fully covered, and those in Hyundai's are not.

And anyway, the suction capped ad was aimed at students - why would a student who couldn't afford car insurance pay for parking in anything more than the lowest, dirtbowl-i-est car park?

$49 for 49 minutes

{ 9:04 PM, Tuesday 20 February 2007 }

A 42 minute wait in a doctor's waiting room hardly seems out of the ordinary. However the doctor I foolishly made an appointment to see has a waiting room (that he shares with about 10 other doctors) in which there is an LCD TV on the wall with Ads such as "Prostate Cancer - Check the Facts" and "Asthma Attack!" and "Southside Pest Control". It's freaking advertising!

Anyhoo, after 42 minutes in the waiting room I was called in. All I needed was a prescription, but obviously not feeling that he could justify charging me the full fee for such a short "here's your prescription!" appointment, he insisted on reading my whole Medical History.

In total I got 49 minutes of my life wasted, and was charged $1 an hour for the privilege. Damn Freaking Doctors!

Storm Alert!

{ 4:45 PM, Saturday 17 February 2007 }

I often wonder what Hungry Jacks is doing. Constantly dragging behind McDonalds' shadow and forever unable to make a decent burger (Hint: Don't make cheese an add-on).

I made the fatal mistake of going to HJ's rather than driving the extra kilometer up the road to Maccas. Seeing the dozen or so cars in the drive-thru queue, I battled the preschooler' party and sticky floor to get to the instore counter. I purchased a Summer Somthing Meal (it's actually "Stunner" if you can decipher the font), which came with their latest desserty adventure - the Storm. Think McFlurry, but smaller, messier and less interesting on so many levels.

The Storm is a base of soft serve ice cream (isn't everything) and comes in three "flavours": Rainbow (hundreds and thousands), Cookies & Cream (more cream?) or Flake (the least amount of chocolate you can put into a chocolate bar before it is no longer classified as a chocolate bar).

Not wanting coloured sugar crystals or an extra helping of artery-clogging cream in my dessert, I chose the Flake option. It was handed to me by someone who I hope was the manager (if not, he was a 45 year old mop monkey).

Now, I know presentation lacks somewhat in the fast food industry (the appearance goes out the window in return for "faster delivery") but how hard can it be to squirt soft serve ice cream into a cup? Half the dessert came sloshed over the side and it didn't swirl nicely like it did in the photo by the cash register.

In fact it looked nothing like the picture. The ice cream level was about an inch lower and it came with half as many chocolate flakes. My coke didn't come with that much ice, and frankly they didn't even give me a straw or a wad of napkins. My chips were floppy and undercooked and my Whopper Jnr was squashed and oozing mayo out the side.

Of course the storm was mostly melted by the time I got to eating it, and the long handled straw I was supplied with was all rough on the tip.

I must say this meal was a Summer Stunner, but not in the way HJs had intended.

Spam Wonderful Spam

{ 7:43 PM, Thursday 15 February 2007 }

Spammers are stupid.

Seriously, who does that sort of thing? Bothering to sign up to a forum and listing not only a website but hobbies, interests and a signature (and occasionally bothering make it sound like someone sane typed it all) just to flog cialis and Viagra?? Or better yet, home incest rape videos!

I spend hours every week (slight exaggeration, perhaps hour every month) deleting spammers from a forum and yet they continue to join in droves. I block their IP addresses and I ban their names, yet they persist!

Most of them aren't even trying. Usernames like "lasikwrt" and "aasdff" are a dead give away, and then they sometimes try to trick you by using a real word disguised amongst random letters, like "fwindyll" or "wxstephenj". But when someone lists their Occupation, Hobbies and Signature as "sex", "sex" and "sex" you know something strange is going on.

If spammers actually want to be accepted into the online community as the drug-pushing, morally-depleted perverts that they are, they should start taking an interest in the forum topics. If the forum is about Blue Heeler's Star Lisa McCune, then perhaps listing your location as "Afghanistan" isn't going to help you be accepted. If the forum is about Harry Potter, then perhaps listing your hobbies as "porn, rape and snuff" isn't the right thing to type.

The successful spammer studies their pray from a distance - they wait for the right time to pounce - listing your Interests on a travel forum as "Snorkelling, Hiking and Brutal Hardcore Rape" is a step in the right direction.

You-Idiot

{ 8:45 PM, Tuesday 6 February 2007 }

I cannot believe that some people have nothing better to do than post crap videos on YouTube. I went looking for a video of a waterslide and the amount of idiots who have posted videos that no one would ever be interested in astounded me.

And then they comment on their own video with "Why is no one commenting?"

Here's a tip - its probably because your video was 30 second of your mum's feet, followed by a pixelated splash that contained your Uncle Earl on the slide. Or maybe it was because the description for your video was "people queuing for a waterslide". Ever thought that people might actually want to see the waterslide itself? Oh, that's right, they wouldn't because your waterslide footage is mostly a shot of your feet and hairy wet legs.

And the effects! My gosh! As if uploading tedious footage of you slowly falling down a not-very-steep waterslide in slow-motion wasn't enough, you also put in the effect of it all happening backwards!

Stop clogging up the Internet with this crap!!

Are Snaps worth $5?

{ 6:55 PM, Sunday 4 February 2007 }

In my professional opinion, no, they are not.

I am of course talking about the latest chocolately offering from those colour-copyrighting bastards at Cadbury: Snaps.

Snaps suck you in with their interesting packet shape - they look like a packet of Pringles (no relation to myself) - Chocolate Pringles; tall, almost cylindrical, with the product name written excitingly on a curve. Then the pictures of the contents of the packet are scattered all over the place, like they're floating through the air. See?

Of course, once you open the Snaps it is quite obvious that they are not chocolate Pringles. Snaps come stacked in a slide out tray and are are nothing more than chocolate melted into Pringle shapes. You get approximately 40 of these wafer-thin melt-in-your-hand 3-point-five-gram mouthfuls in a box.

Yeah, there are only 136g of chocolate in this box! Compare this to a 150g block of Dairy Milk which retails for around $3 - it doesn't really add up... Why should I buy these Snaps-things? They're so freaking expensive!

The only reason I bought them was because they were discounted at Woolies after Christmas. There were hundreds of boxes left. I can only assume they didn't sell them all because they were originally FIVE DOLLARS.

And don't pretend we didn't notice the use of the chocolately African-American hand in the advertising material...

Rental Crisis

{ 11:17 PM, Thursday 1 February 2007 }

I've spent the last month or so looking for share accommodation with very little luck. There is a website that shows share houses around where I work so most of the flatmates would be uni students, something I can tolerate (to a point).

Let's have a look at some of the places on offer:

And you got into University, how? It also worries me that the kitchen was "rebuilded" and not renovated. Renovation I can understand, but what exactly happened in the kitchen that caused the whole room to need rebuilding?

Hold on - you have 5 people living in this house and ONE CHAIR between all of you? I'm assuming they put using the chair on the roster along with cleaning the toilet and taking the bins out.

Let me get this straight - the main features of your Fully Furnished House are small appliances? Dude, you can buy a toaster for $8 at Aldi!

No toasters here, but a power board to plug one (or four) into! Is it really neccessary to advertise something that enables you to use the electricity? You may as well say the room comes with a light switch on the wall. Although, they haven't mentioned that, so bring candles.

Helful, hey? Now I'm sure if this is a type-o of Helpful or Hellful - either way, I can imagine they would be knocking on your door at all hours of the night asking if you want a cup of Earl Grey.

A 40-seater Greyhound or a washed-up League player who is desperately trying to rebuild his post-retirement career. My money's on the bus.

Again, not quite sure what they're getting at. The basket might be made of cloth, or it could just be to put your cloth in. At least they didn't type sloth basket.

This one is much classier than the last one - they have a whole cupboard to put your piece of cloth in!

This one lets you bring multiple pieces of cloth, but it's best that they're kept outside; there's no room inside, what with all the 'sets' cluttering the place up. Not to mention the vaccum cleaner.

Ooh, Stainless. This can only mean two things. The occupants are germ-o-phobe neat freaks who clean everything with industrial strength bleach OR they are serial killers who take great pride in making sure there is no evidence left of last night's bloody hackfest.

There's one bedroom and so many people in the room you can't count them all... please tell me you're not all sleeping in the cases? Does the person who gets the single bed have to stack the cases on top of each other? With all those students I'm surprised there is room for a computer connected to the Internect.

Kill me now...

Are condiments included?

Alternatively you could fit three gibbons, one marmoset + sifaka or one water polo team + coach or marijuana crop and 3 or 4 pimps or 1 trapeze artist, 1 fire eater and 5-6 midgets/bearded women.

Quit people? Sounds like my sort of company! Give it a few weeks - its only a matter of time before they lose interest in their current employment pursuits - their grammar is out the window anyway. They'll soon be evicted and you'll end up with the place to yourself.

Degrees of Whinging

{ 8:29 PM, Tuesday 30 January 2007 }

I received a complaint today. From a person who claimed that their air conditioning was too hot. Not just too hot as in - "it's 35 degrees outside and 41 degrees in my office" - it was too hot as in "can you get a mechanic to lower my air conditioning by one degree".

Yeah, a degree.

The temperature in the office would have been about 23, maybe 21 degrees. Meanwhile the person who was called to correct the sweltering "mistake" would have been working in a 40-50 degree plant room for most of the summer - the coolest place they would have been would be outside where its 37 degrees and 70% humidity.

Can people not realise how lucky they are to even have air conditioning in the first place? Can they not be satisfied with anything a degree below the temperature outside?

Just wait until water restrictions start banning A/C units - then we'll see who can whine the most!

Back to School

{ 9:16 PM, Monday 29 January 2007 }

Make your own Feel-Good News Story

Most kiddies went back to school today, but the best thing about the first school day of the year is that inevitably a local news crew will turn up to capture the magic on film and hack it into the same story they broadcast last year and the previous 20 years before that.

Now you too can make your own feel-good news story!

First, you need to find a school with the most sets of twins - anything over 4 sets is preferable, but its a bonus if you can find one with a set of triplets, quads or anything more multiple than that. Then line them all up and make a comment about how the poor teachers are going to be so confused.

Next, find a kid who is obviously scared out of their mind and stick the camera in their face. Then ask them what their name is and wait for them to start howling - that will be the clip you use as a promo before you go to an ad break.

If you can find a school that has something special about it - say, a new building, or a recently opened disabled ramp - or if fortunate enough, a school that suffered a tragedy - death and arson being the preferable options.

If you can get footage of a politician opening a new classroom, or simply hanging out for a photo opportunity with some kids who are guinea pigs in the latest government literacy programme, then you can use that footage under a voice over.

The final piece of footage you will need is of a class full of grade one or prep students sitting cross-legged on the ground, while a teacher reads them a giant story book on a wooden easel.

Other optional footage may include parents crying and hugging children, parents walking their children across the road (with or without lollipop ladies) or a few cute shots of children in over-sized uniforms with backpacks half their size.

Slap this all together and slot it in between a story about revenue-raising cops and a Hollywood gossip piece and you've got yourself a feel-good news story.

Blog 4.0

{ 9:51 PM, Thursday 25 January 2007 }

I must confess that this isn't the first time I've started a blog.

Like most of the Western world I thought I had something interesting to say to the masses, but alas, it didn't extend past two badly-worded thoughts and an amusing picture that I had photoshopped.

In fact I think my first blog never actually got blogged in. It just sat there. The second one died a slow death at the hands of a mislaid username and password. The third managed to clock up about 10 entries of varying degrees of tedium before I lost interest.

So this is Version 4.0 - I really don't have time to have a blog what with work and other pursuits that aren't work (or blogging), but I have a long history of quitting and I can't sustain that record if I don't start things I know I will have no dedication to within several weeks.