Hello, I'm an imbecile, aka Australian.

It’s gotten to the stage where I take great pleasure in reading the Herald Sun just to rant about the moronic content/commentary/drivel passing for articles/lack of style/you get the picture.

On Sunday I was blessed (and this was after a cursory glance) with two golden opportunities.

Not only was Catherine Lambert’s usual laughably pathetic attempt at finding a vaguely fashionable person to photograph and deconstruct up (or down) to par, but Eddie MacGuire chose to address the Victorian public with no little disregard for the coventions of written English. Sentence 1: incomplete. Sentence 2: incomplete. Sentence 3: punctuation would have helped. Sentence 4: I forget, but there was something wrong with it, because my outrage was squarely centred on the fact that a Year 9 student should (although given the state of our education system, may not) be able to produce four coherent sentences.

Fair enough, Eddie’s an everyman, so maybe it’s to his benefit to be semi-illiterate. I wouldn’t know, being one of the minority holding a postgraduate qualification. I’m not even meant to be reading the Herald-Sun; I should be supporting The Age or The Australian along with my university-educated peers.

It’s distressingly easy to see why people are becoming dumber; the public sphere expects so little of us – and so we get condescension ladled out in spoonfuls; SHOCK! Our weekly shopping is getting more expensive! A. Buy home brands (because that solves the problem of raw material and production costs rising, DER.) SHOCK! Our kids are getting fatter! A. Boost their self-esteem, because all that emotional eating is destroying them (not what you put in your trolley or what they’re bullied into wanting by advertising, another dissertation altogether). SHOCK! Australian public growing more stupid! A. Yeah, no, like really?

On a more distressing note, this is my 200th blog post. Two hundred posts and I've still got things to gripe about. Wow. I suppose I should come up with some fantastic giveaway or way of compelling people to come out of the woodwork, leave comments, pander to my ego, etc, but this requires more thought than I'm capable of on a Monday night, hacking and sneezing my way toward bedtime. Help me. 

In which I complain.

Dear Herald Sun,

You suck.

I realise this isn’t a surprise.

However, you even suck at the things you should be good at. Being a tabloid-y, let’s-gawp-at-celebrities and have-a-lifestyle newspaper, you should at LEAST be good at the lifestyle parts.

Fail.

Massive fail.

Catherine Lambert, you’re not style police. Street smart? Give it a rest. You don’t even reach the bar of looking-moderately-put-together in any way, shape or form. I could have found you fifty people on Friday night in Northcote who looked better (for ANY given value of ‘better’) than Ilesha H. Hell, I could have found fifty people in Frankston who had some kind of ‘look’ pulled together tighter than the ruffly-in-all-the-wrong places red dress on Ms. H.

Stripper shoes might be fun, but not when you match “expensive items with less expensive items” because there is nothing that can be called matching going on here. Sweetheart, your shoes make your (white, fluffy, cropped-sleeve) jacket look like your pimp bought it. A blind pimp with tactile issues and really short arms.

And when you wear your little red dress with your really little white fluffy jacket and your stripper heels with contrasting silver peep-toes AND weird glittery ankle straps (lesson one in elongating legs: ankle straps are FAIL) refrain from bling.

Hang on. Refrain? Oh, that means do it again, right? Wrong. Teaming a clutch hewn out of Priscilla gunmetal-grey sequins with all this is disaster. However, why stop there? When you’ve gone this far, the only sensible option is to load on all the jewellery in your possession. (Possibly so innocent bystanders have time to run and hide.)

I can count (yes, even with one hand awkwardly-on-back-of-hip and partially concealed by the small Samoyed savaging Ms.H’s torso) a watch with a beaded bracelet with another beaded bracelet (big, chunky silver beads) WITH a heart dangling from said beads. Ok. Look, it’s been a confusing season for everyone, but why then mish a gold phoenix necklace to this mash?

If the phoenix was TRULY bringing you “spiritual guidance” it would have set fire to half the contents of your wardrobe (the stripper half) and we’d be left with an attractive brunette. Maybe not SO suitable for publication, since all she’d be wearing was a lovely phoenix necklace, but what a classy necklace.

I think the expert (Sesil Arzadian, of Anton Jewellery) said it best: “Certainly, this look has a lot happening.”

What the expert forgot to say: Catherine Lambert, you’re a knucklehead. Get some new glasses and a subscription to a magazine. Any magazine.

Live where?

The weekend is thankfully over, and with it Frankston Council’s Festival of Lights (or, as the traders call it, Festival of Fights). I love my hometown and all, but it’s a little distressing to respond to heavy rain with “Well, that’ll keep all the drinkers at home.” Sad? True.

This is a weird place. People at one end say they actually live in a subsidiary of Mt Eliza, or North Frankston. Multi-million dollar residences litter the cliff face and there are lots of nice cars. Lots of yummy mummies sporting ghd-ironed hair and the kind of fake tan that involves a paper g-string and a home visit, not just a home application. Ten minutes down the road is everyone’s favorite game: Spot the unmarked cop car. If there’s only one, it’s a slow day.

Frankston’s main street: Friday: 3 pm. A car is pulled over and the driver fined for driving an unroadworthy vehicle. The four inhabitants bicker about the ownership of the slab (no, I’m not talking about a piece of rock) in the back, while the cop pries the license plates off with a standard police-issue screwdriver. Presumably this is so the moustachioed driver (I have a feeling that’s not a Movember mo) can’t continue to drive the bomb. Lucky his passengers all have recourse to the famous beer taxi.

Depressed? Already? Don’t go near the station, then. Frankston station is possibly the most written-about station in Australian history. Once it was the train you hopped to bum on the beach for a day.  Now… I’m sure you can all hear the next bit coming. Work it out for yourself.  Across the road it’s like walking through one of those miserable glass boxes they keep airport smokers in, except the smokers at the airport are better dressed and don’t usually have small children with them.

Let's not even mention the number of pharmacies that operate primarily as methadone clinics. Lots of small children there, too.

One block over, the bus stop is an unofficial meeting point for freshly tattooed and pierced adolescents, a kind of “Who wants to be an Unemployable Lout?!” without the relief of ad-breaks and absolutely no suspense whatsoever, because the whole lot are going to win if they have to knock all their own teef – sorry, teeth – out to do so.

I’m sure part of Australia’s charm was our claim on classlessness. Lovable larrikinism, rough camaraderie, having a few beers on the back deck as the sun went down.

Mind the gap.

Fricking huntsman spiders.

So I get home from work and go to check my email.
No internets.
Nothing.
Nada.
Irrational panic.
Hubs left home this morning and will be gone eight days. EIGHT DAYS? I can't live without internet access for EIGHT DAYS!!!
I mean, what will I do if someone emails me and I have to give them my bank account details in the next thirty seconds or SOMEONE ELSE gets the thirty million loonies (canadian dollars)???
How will I check the weather and know what density jeans to wear? And if I should be wearing a singlet top underneath stuff (for brrrrr layering) or OVER stuff (because it'll warm up later and I am SO sick of myself wearing the boring of boringness)?
HOW???

In desperation I turned my computer off and on again. Nothing. I mean it connected to the network and all, but the joys of wireless are such that when it works, it's great. Invisible internetty goodness within my house = happy days. Mysterious network-showing-up-but-no-action-in-my-browser = unhappiness. Sadness. Shouting at thin air no longer occupied by hubs (aka chief geek who can fix all computer problems known to man. And to me, who just has trouble plugging stuff in sometimes).

But then! Aha! Bright idea! I will go DOWNSTAIRS to the portal of internet (that would be the cupboard under the house that houses all our webby stuff) and stare at it, willing it back into invisible health, wellbeing, and the ability to scrape information off the internet and feed it to my screen.
Hmmm.
There's a very large huntsman on the staircase.
Hmmm.

The last time there was a huntsman in the house, suzukisinger and I inhaled more flyspray than it did. then,laughing hysterically, belted it randomly with a newspaper, mostly missing. I think it died from drowning in puddle o'spray rather than contact with any hard surface. I don't really like spiders.

Ok. Newspaper. Armed with cylinder, snuck up on spider. Realised that squashing spider was going to make one helluva mess. (I was planning on hitting it rather hard, yes. No-one ever wanders around chanting "Concuss....Concuss... It's exterminate or nothing.) THIS is the bizarre part. Put DOWN cylinder, trotted back upstairs, fetched large plastic container and lid, trapped spider and set it free.

Hubs, if you're reading this, I deserve a very special present (yes, another one) just for that humane act. Not sure what came over me... but there's ANOTHER miracle to report. No mom, I am not pregnant. Put that clucky-grandchildy-thing away already. I THEN proceeded to the Cupboard Where All Things Internet Happen, wrenched it open and stared wretchedly for a little while. Lights went blip and blink and were completely incomprehensible. Yargh.

Of course, things can't get any worse. I am already internetless, so whatevs. Detached a cord that was plugged into a socket that said POWER which may or may not have belonged to the modem, counted to five, plugged it back in and shut the cupboard. Stupid cupboard. Sulkily stomped back upstairs, flung self on bed, demonstratively because it's all-so-useless-and-futile poked refresh a few times and -

HALLALUJAH!

Internets!

Of course, now I discover that no-one loves me. Sigh. Oh, the cruelty.

Reclaiming my conscious

...that's right, subconscious, your days of string-pulling and nefarious control are over.

From herein I will embrace the dead relatives putting in their two cents, actively cleanse my aura (aura detox? I wonder...) and be fully responsible for my own actions while allowing other people to be their own baggage handlers/porters/sherpas/beast of burden.

Coffee's part of the aura detox regime, right?
Damn.
I do a lot of stuff without really thinking it through.
On one hand this is fantastic: I get lots and lots done. On the other, I suspect much of it doesn't need to be done by me. Where's the line between selfish and selfless?

The two mothers at the table opposite have selfish down to a fine art, complete with threatening, harridan monologue. One's loop of interrogation regarding wanting to go somewhere on Saturday has ME confused; I can only wonder about the child.

I can smell a coffee being made.
If it's not mine...
Phew. Nearly had to walk.
AND the if you don't... do you WANT to go? Don't touch! Don't kick the table! Come here RIGHT now! Don't make me... brigade are leaving. With their three present children and two more incipient.
Hmmm.

Handed over my engagement and wedding rings to be cleaned today. Was walking along enjoying the sunshine, thinking Gee, those rings in the window look awfully sparkly. I have sparkly! Oh, right. Not SO sparkly. But these lovely people will help me achieve superficial sparkliness! People! Clean my rings please!

Lovely girl returns after some consultation with resident jeweller to tell me some of my sparkly is attached by bare minimum of setting and I am very lucky to still have sparkliness, grubby or otherwise. We agree would be downright inconvenient to lose sparkly and I grudgingly hand over my bling for repair. I'm feeling a bit naked now.Have toyed with the idea of purchasing replacement (fake) bling but I'm sure I have a ring at home that will fit on the appropriate finger, just to keep the Omigod I've LOST my RING where the HELL is it??? panic that kicks me (complete with adrenaline rush) every fifteen seconds. Or thereabouts.

I'm a little intrigued by the last few posts... When I stick poetic junk in, people don't comment. This is either (a) unfortunate synchronicity (b) a general unwillingness to say "Hey, that's really crap!" or (c) Dunno. I'd like to find out. I am reasonably difficult to offend, so (as previously mentioned, I'm sure) CRITICISM welcome! Or discussion, if it makes you more comfortable to call it that. Four years at uni having stuff pulled apart (and every day small children pulling my last statement apart) has desenitised me remarkably well.